


falling in reverse

by singtome



Series: Adventures of Wingman and Glow Boy [1]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Fluff, Getting Together, Heavy Themes of Sexy Lonely Seascapes, Lighthouses, M/M, Mutant Powers, Pining, Small Towns, They're messes but what else is new, wing fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21859831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: The sky is deep indigo above the clouds, and Newt takes a leisurely stroll – no flips or twirls or other acrobatic maneuvers he is otherwise partial to; just a slow glide above the white, fluffy clouds. He stretches his wings until he feels sated enough to fly back down, landing on the railing of the lantern room balcony like a dancer; one foot then two, jumping down, his wings fluttering out and curling in as if they were bowing to an invisible audience.--“So, were you dropped into a tub of radioactive waste as a baby too, or?”(Alternate: The one when they have superpowers and life's weird.)
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Series: Adventures of Wingman and Glow Boy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606210
Comments: 19
Kudos: 112
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2019





	falling in reverse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [otterie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterie/gifts).



> Merry Christmas everyone, and a special Merry Christmas to Lottie! 
> 
> She asked for superhero/mutant au (making my dreams come true, tbh) and it was an absolute _pleasure_ to write. I had so much fun with this, and I hope you enjoy, my dear, and I hope you have a great christmas and a happy new year! <3
> 
> Title from "Falling In Reverse" by Eden.

A loveliness; to fall with grace.

Sea salt in your veins

You feel it on your tongue

The wind whispers your name, and

You shout it back. – Unknown

Newt counts foghorns like sheep.

It is past one in the morning, last he checked, which could have been an hour ago or all of five minutes, and Newt cannot sleep. The waves crashing on the shore four stories below him are a usual ambient companion that normally accompanies him off to sleep but, now, the stilled moments between the waves roaring upward before they crash against the rocks and hiss of distilled glee only keep him awake. Mind idle and body restless, Newt sighs and turns over to face the window. 

The moon is shrouded by a thin veil of clouds tonight, and its light casts milky shadows into the room. 

The rooms itself is simple: round, made of stone walls and wooden floors. A small dresser sits by a small chair sits by a small table sits before a small window – _the_ window, the only one in the room – responsible for 62% of Newt’s daily vitamins when he isn’t one floor up tending to the lantern and keeping the fuel in check, or tending to the garden. By the door is Newt’s bed; small, single, not long enough to keep his feet from poking out the end of it.

The bedroom is the fourth floor of the lighthouse, of which Newt spends his days tending to. Keeping, they call it, although Newt often wonders how one could keep a lighthouse. Rather, _it_ keeps _you_. This is most prominent in the way the lighthouse itself – Haven Bay Lighthouse, just a little way off Gold Beach, Cape Sebastian, Oregon – sits on a bed of rocks attached to an arm of longer rocks flattened into a road, sticking out like an extra limb from the main landmass.

It is quiet, most days, and usually comforting.

Aside from tonight, for whatever reason.

Newt shuts his eyes and counts _two, three, four_ more foghorns before he decides he’s had enough; pushing the blankets off his body, he stands. Sighing and rubbing his eyes, Newt begins to toe around the general vicinity of his bed until he feels the tip of his foot touch the familiar shape of his worn steel toe boots. He finds his trousers, jumper, and coat (the only part of his “uniform” that is mandatory – banana yellow, ghastly, clashes awfully with his skin and makes him look ill) before moving on to the binds around his torso.

Newt begins at the shoulders, gently loosening until he is able to bend down and touch his toes without any constraint. Newt sighs and rolls his shoulders back, enjoying the crack of his joints.

Slipping on his shoes and quickly pulling the woollen beanie over his head, Newt begins the spiral trudge down to the bottom.

 _A bit of a climb,_ Nigel had said twelve months ago, on Newt’s first day – upon being introduced to the ten-foot-tall, sun-bleached phallic stain in the landscape the old man had remarked, _Isn’t she a beaut?_ and Newt politely pressed his lips and didn’t say anything.

The lighthouse, he guesses, is beautiful in its own way – the way porcelain sculptures are beautiful in that you could blow on them a little too hard and they might shatter. Beautifully fragile.

Newt broke four doorknobs and a hand rail in his first week.

 _Long way up,_ Nigel continued. Nice man, as charming as he was wrinkly, and Welsh. Newt wonders what happened to him.

 _Not a problem_ , Newt replied, fingers itching and knees restless. 

_‘Course not,_ Nigel remarked, _a young, springy lad like you! It’ll keep you fit, anyhow._

It has. Running up and down the stairs has become somewhat of a daily exercise routine for Newt. He knows every bump and curve of these stairs, knows which to avoid and which to hop slightly to the left on, and which will creak, loud and ear-splitting if you step in a certain area. After a year Newt is fairly confident in his knowledge of Haven Bay Lighthouse, and could draw it in detail with his eyes closed, which is why it comes as a shock – both fright and physical shock – when his knee collides with a blunt object sitting millimeters from the front door.

Electricity spirals up his leg and Newt swears for quite some time, under his breath and in the two whole languages that he knows, clutching his knee and doing a little hop. The pain subsides after a minute and Newt’s vision clears enough to make out that the offending object is two wooden crates dumped at his doorstep.

One of them, after further observation, has a slip of paper nailed to the top which flaps spasmodically in the wind. 

_\- Kid,_

_I know these are a little early and sorry to just dump them here, but I won’t be able to make it tomorrow. I’m skipping town. Finally saved up enough from this shit hole to be able to buy the missus a nice cottage by the beach. Not here, though. Fuck that. Maybe somewhere with a pretty mountain view or some shit._

_Anyway. Take care. Maybe show your face once and a while to the next bastard whose job it is to bring you food every month. Or don’t. Whatever._

_It’s been real._

_PS. Word of advice – find a better job._

_Vince. -_

Newt reads the note over three more times. The fifth sentence reaches out and grips him until he is forced to crumple the paper and shove it deep in his pockets, sparing only a moment to feel guilty that he hadn’t known his courier’s name before tonight.

He concludes the boxes can stay there for now. If he is going to have to spend the rest of the night packing away the food, cleaning supplies and fuel then they can wait until Newt has at least half a bag of cheese puffs in him. Newt casts a glance up at the lantern, watching it do its slow spin around the bay. There are no ships scheduled to pass through tonight, so feeling confident, Newt rolls his shoulders back, cracks his neck, and shuts his eyes.

The wings are stiff, as they usually are when Newt keeps them bound too long. It is quite like sitting in a chair for hours without being allowed to get up and walk; joints become stiff and your bones feel restless like they are too big beneath your skin. It is how the wings feel when they slip out from beneath Newt’s skin, move through the layers of flesh to pass fluidly out from the thin scars that cut down his shoulder blades. Maneuvering past the fabric of Newt’s undershirt, T-Shirt and jumper (of which Newt has cut slits into) they are finally free – great, thick and pearlescent, they stretch twice as wide as the length of Newt’s arms. Feathers that look like they could slice a man in half, but also appear soft enough that you could fall asleep in them.

Newt takes a moment to stretch them out, feel the wind between the feathers and feel them ruffle in the cold night breeze – previously biting, now perfect, fluid, soothing.

The light of the moon shines down on him in ghostly rivets. Newt flaps his wings once to shake them out and twice to warm them up, enjoying the satisfying pop of the ligaments and joints, until finally, he decides it is time to take off.

A running start isn’t always necessary, but Newt has been kept up in that tower (totally of his own volition) for so long that it feels nice to just take off down the stone path. He’s seen pelicans bolt down the length of the beach with their wings stretched outwards and their heads held high, has spent a length of time watching them as they do so. There is a certain comfort in watching other winged creatures take flight that he can’t quite put a name to, but it sits in the space between his ribs and lingers, warm.

He wonders if, as he watches the pelicans, the pelicans – or bats, more like, the pelicans most definitely asleep at this hour as he should be – would feel the same emotional charge in their chests as they watch Newt take off.

Midnight black waves lap at Newt’s ankles as he runs, crashing against the edges of the long arm of thin land which connects the mainland to Haven Rock. Newt’s wings beat on either side of his body, the incredible force of them throwing back the waves as they come, causing them to curl in on themselves in a spiral helix high above Newt’s head until finally – _finally_ – he springs off from the ground and is soaring through the air.

Newt makes a habit to follow certain rules when flying to town, them being;

  1. Only on cloudy nights, when the light of the moon is shielded.
  2. Only on nights where there are no boats scheduled to pass through the thoroughfare.



And,

  1. Only when the pain in his back is so strong he can barely handle it anymore. When it feels as if the bones are pushing against his skin, ready to find _alternate exits_ if need be.



Tonight checks all the boxes. So, he flies.

_

The town of Haven Bay sits nestled in a quaint valley populated marginally by fishermen, occult shop keepers, and college-aged kids with glazed looks in their eyes, and who walk as if their feet have other ideas as to where they should be. It is as ordinary as town as they come, with ordinary small-town occurrences. The strangest thing that has happened in the last ten years, according to Nigel, was that one time a fisherman fished up a three-headed trout.

 _Caused quite the stir,_ Nigel said, _The man who fished it up, you see, didn’t want anyone to know he’d found it, so you know what he did? Cut the spare two heads off and tried to sell it to the market all casual with the others! Bah! He didn’t know the thing glowed, either, and spat acid up to five feet away. Burnt a hole in Gertie’s sign._

That incident was, also according to Nigel, Haven Bay’s one and only run-in with Mutants.

Newt shakes his head to banish the thought and focuses on flying.

He likes to keep close to the trees. Less chance to be seen that way. There aren’t usually a lot of cars driving on the highway at night, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

(You never really know who could be lurking around a corner with a camera. Or, worse.)

He lands in the parking lot of Beck’s Thrift Store behind the dumpster where the broken light and fake security cameras are – Installed some time ago to stop kids from vandalizing public property. It became the perfect landing strip once Newt noticed that the red light to indicate the cameras were live was non-existent, and remained static. Judging from the words _BECK SUCKS COCK_ written in dripping black spray paint on the red brick, he hazards a guess that the kids have figured it out, too.

Newt folds his wings back in and slips his coat on. Hands shoved deep in the pockets and head dipped low, he crosses the street to the 7-Eleven. The store is mostly empty save for a couple of teenagers who look too young to be buying beer trying to decide between cheery or apple cider, and the cashier bobbing his head to the beat of _Smalltown Boy_ that plays softly over the speakers.

The clerk lifts his head at the sound of Newt entering through the door to cast one very unconcerned glance his way, and neither of the teenagers flinches, but Newt hunches his shoulders and tugs the edges of his beanie down over his ears anyway, heading straight for the snack food aisle. Cheetos under one arm (cheddar, extra cheesy) and a six-pack of muesli bars under the other, Newt’s last stop of the night is the hair care aisle.

The range of dyes is what you’d expect from a convenience store, and Newt focuses his attention on the darker side of the spectrum, eyes out for the particular shade of chocolate brown that is currently in his hair. With hair that grows as annoyingly fast as his does, a month of regrowth means the natural blonde of his roots is detrimental enough to cause stress, thus the hat.

Finally spotting the box with the woman sporting the lustrous brown curls and wide, soulless smile, Newt grabs it and takes his winnings to the counter. 

In front of him, the three teenagers are arguing with the cashier that, yes, they were of course twenty-one, and just forgot their IDs at home, c’mon man, so Newt hangs back and waits. The small box television flashes at him from the corner above the freezers. A news anchor reads the latest on the political polls and the stock market before a breaking news alert from hours earlier replays.

“This just in,” the news anchor from six hours ago begins, “News of an attack in east Philadelphia shocks the state as a group of Mutants calling themselves the Terrible Titans attempt to destroy a shopping mall on Island avenue …”

The broadcast zeros into footage of the event and Newt watches as a group of five or so Mutants wreck havoc on a small shopping mall. Two of them are in the air and the other three on the ground. One holds the physique of a cat and she runs on all fours, talons a foot long, tearing up anything in sight. Another appears to be an actual boulder, who rolls across the grounds like a trap from Indiana Jones, crushing various stalls and cafes, bursting through the front of the building like it’s made of rice paper. Finally, one of the Mutants in the air flies around on large brown wings the shape and the size of a hawk’s, and shoots fire out of their eyes and mouth at men, women and children, who run screaming for their lives.

The anchor continues, in a grim tone, “The injury toll stands at 57, while the death toll –”

“Sir?”

Newt starts. The teenagers are gone, their attempted purchase sitting on the counter beside the cashier, who’s eyes dart from Newt to the bag of Cheetos in his hands. Newt’s eyes also dart to the Cheetos, and with a wince, he realises he has squeezed the bag so hard that it’s popped, and air-light orange balls are escaping over the top and down to the floor.

Newt quickly clamps the top of the bag closed with his hand and hurries on up to the counter.

“Sorry,” he says, carefully setting the box of muesli bars and hair dye down.

The cashier shrugs. “No sweat, man. Shit’s crazy, huh?” he says, gesturing to the television. They managed to catch two out of the five in the end; the boulder man and the woman who sliced through concrete with her talons, their mug shots displayed in glorious technicolour on screen. 

Newt pays for his supplies and watches as the cashier slides them into a bag painfully slow, sans the Cheetos, which Newt keeps hold of like an extra-cheesy life preserver, and leaves the moment he has his receipt.

The news report echoes in his mind as he walks across the parking lot _(The injury toll stands at 57, while the death toll –)_ and almost doesn’t hear the three teenagers from before calling out to him until a stern, “Yo, Mister!” hits him in the side of the skull like a rolled-up paper bag.

Newt blinks down at his feet – the paper bag is, in fact, a poster for an upcoming winter dance – and then back up at the kids.

“You wanna make twenty bucks?” the shorter one asks.

Newt regards them for a moment before replying, “I don’t take lunch money.”

The two goonies in the back snicker to themselves while the frontman growls and spits on the ground – the modern age equivalent of throwing a gauntlet or cocking a gun in the middle of the town square, he supposes.

Newt suddenly feels sleepy.

“You talk weird,” one of the ones in the back remarks, and Newt bites his tongue. “Where’re you from?”

“Down the road.”

“North or south?”

“South.”

“You a pussy?”

Newt sighs. “Oh, I imagine you’ll let me know the answer to that in a minute,” he says, and gestures vaguely to the thrift store. “I take it that’s your handy work.”

“Yeah!” The tallest of the group pipes, “You like it?”

“Oh yes, you have a true gift. Do you want me to buy you beer, or not?”

The frontman raises an eyebrow. “You’ll actually do it? For real, man?”

“Are any of you under sixteen?” The three of them shake their heads. Newt can’t decide if he cares enough to believe them. “Fine.”

When he clicks his fingers the boys scamper towards him like pups to their dinner bowls, and between the three of them they manage to shove $10.49 into Newt’s gloved hand.

“ _Twenty bucks_ ,” Newt mutters to himself before he walks back into the store and picks out the shittiest, cheapest pack of beer he can possibly find, and a six-pack of apple cider for himself. The cashier eyes him oddly, but most likely reasons that he has less than an hour left of his shift and can’t gather up enough energy to care.

The three’s eyes light up like children in a toy store when Newt hands them over the case, obviously no idea how awful this brand tastes. Granted, Newt remembers being sixteen – he would drink anything if it had an alcohol count, too. The boys are waiting eagerly outside when Newt returns, trying not to look as such. When he shoves the case into the taller one’s chest and hands them their $1.50 in change back, listening to their words of thanks, Newt stands back and regards them, and, against his better judgment, asks a question.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed? It’s Thursday night. Er, morning.”

“Dude,” the middle man says, “No school. It’s, like, Thanksgiving break.”

Newt blinks.

“November 28?”

Newt blinks harder. Since _when?_

The boys stare back at him, just as blankly.

Turning and walking away before his mind can dwell on this gruelling discovery any longer – the boys shouting a final _Thanks mister!_ at his back – Newt waits until they are completely out of sight before shredding his jacket and unfurling his wings to fly home.

_

Being a lighthouse keeper isn’t necessarily a harrowing job, but it does have its moments.

For example – Newt has been looking after HB Lighthouse for almost a solid year now, and around this time last year almost managed to freeze himself solid. The generator broke due to a massive blizzard that had wiped out all cell service, so on top of getting hyperthermia, Newt couldn’t call his superiors to advise them he was getting hyperthermia. The roads were blocked, streetlights were out, and no one could radio in. With blue fingers and red nose, Newt did everything in his power to keep the light going.

A boat crashing into the cliff face, instantly killing himself and everyone on it, would have been the absolute cherry on top of the cake.

Eventually, at about four o’clock in the morning, body wreaked with exhaustion, Newt curled up into a ball on his bed and unfurled his wings to wrap around his body like a cocoon, with the only food he’d had left – a packet of sea salt chips and two grapefruits.

This time of year always leaves Newt with a measurable amount of anxiety, not wholly because of that night, though it does play a large role (his skin never quite feels warm anymore, and his joints lock up when the slightest chill caresses his body. Only when he is flying does it disappear.)

The humbling, non-life-threatening duties of a lighthouse keeper include:

  1. Waking up at 5AM every morning to record the weather and report it to his superiors in … Portland, probably.
  2. Grab a pair of binoculars and take a quick look-see of the horizon line, and watch out for the condition of the sea. If the tide is particularly worrisome for whatever reason, he reports it.
  3. Try and fail not to stub his toe on the sharp edge of a table, as he is to do all this with the lights off for better observation. Maybe.
  4. Look at the clouds. Is it going to rain? Report that the possibility of rain is on the horizon.
  5. Check with the weather app on his iPhone 2 to conclude, yep, a light sprinkle is coming.
  6. Call the Gold Beach Airport and deliver his findings.
  7. If the weather is sunny Newt cuts the small bit of grass surrounding the lighthouse.
  8. If it’s raining he pretends to.



(Newt did not, by the most traditional of sense, have the right qualifications for this job. Or any in fact. But the old keeper had passed and Nigel was desperate to find someone, and here was Newt, eighteen and lost and scared someone will find out about the things in his back, who needed a place to hide away.)

He takes care of the lighthouse. It is, by definition, his home, so when Newt finds a large chip of paint in his bedroom or the library, or a loose board in the kitchen, he takes the time to mend them until any evidence that there ever was something amiss is defeated.

Once the weather report is done, he runs up and down the stairs. Tightens his binds. Runs again. At night he cooks – stew or soup or some nice steamed vegetables if he’s feeling up to it. Finally, he will attempt to watch something on television or something on Netflix if the signal is being kind to him, then he will spend an hour or so idly sketching away in his book before rolling himself up in the blankets and falling asleep to the sound of the waves. 

Every third week of the month Newt dyes his hair brown, focusing on the roots until any evidence of blonde is gone.

_

It is a sunny day and Newt is tending to the patch of grass when he hears it.

A deep rumble in the distance, growing closer, that sounds as if it is crying for help while simultaneously shouting for someone to grant it the sweet mercy of death. Newt turns slowly towards the noise, brows furrowed and eyes squinting against the sun, and what he sees makes him rub his eyes with his fists and try again, it’s so ridiculous. 

A motorcycle, or a sorry excuse for one, crawls its way down the hill and over the rocky plane towards Newt, spitting out a vapour trail of grey smoke behind it that would make an environmentalist weep with grief. Newt watches in perplexed awe as the creature comes closer, struggling over the rocky terrain of the bridge, before finally coming to a stop at the foot of the rickety steps.

On the motorcycle is a person, which Newt finds the strangest of all as he cannot, not for the life of his, fathom why someone would voluntarily allow themselves anywhere near that thing.

The man wears a helmet and a worn brown leather jacket with woolen lining, and boots that are the same. He kicks the stand – it goes with some persistence – and swings off the bike with a steady kind of confidence like he doesn’t quite know what he’s swinging off from. Does he know? Has anyone told him?

Newt is about to ask, followed by a sharp _Can I help you?_ when he notices that behind the bike, as if the whole scene wasn’t bad enough, trails a medium-sized metal trailer that holds half a dozen or so crates.

Newt realises, startlingly, that this man is his new courier.

The man pulls his helmet off to reveal a pink face and a shock of dark hair sticking up at all angles like it has no respect for the principles of gravity. He shakes his gloved hands out and rolls his shoulders like they’re stiff, before looking up at Newt with a polite, pressed lipped smile and greeting, “Hello.”

Newt stares.

“It’s uh,” the man hooks a thumb over his shoulder, “It’s quite a drive down here, huh?”

Newt continues to stare. After a moment, the man clears his throat, “So, uh. Where did you want these?”

“What?” Newt manages to croak, his throat dry.

The man’s eyes snap open like he’s suddenly remembered he left the iron on at home. “Oh! Shit, sorry, hi! I’m Thomas. I’m your new courier. You’re Newt, right? Cool name. Nice to meet you.”

He bounces up the stairs and holds a hand out for Newt to shake. He, for whatever reason, decides to take his glove off to do so. The skin of his palm is flushed red, too.

Newt, after a moment’s hesitation, reaches out and grips Thomas’ hand. He finds his skin to be warm.

Probably from the exertion of hauling that Thing down here from Haven Bay. 

What Newt means to say: _Nice to meet you, too,_ or _Hello_ , or _Thank you_ , or _Yes, please, just inside will do nicely._

What Newt actually says: “You’re early.”

And not nicely.

Thomas’ smile drops and he pulls his hand back. It hovers in the air awkwardly for a brief moment before coming to settle in his hair. He attempts to push it down, like he’s just realised the state of it, clearing his throat.

“Right, um. Yeah, sorry, the traffic was bad,” he says. Newt frowns.

Thomas turns back to the trailer quickly and begins pulling the covers off. Seeing them here, now, in broad daylight is also a bit of a trip for Newt, so used to Vince dropping them off for him in the middle of the night. Thomas obviously didn’t get the memo.

Newt regards him for a moment: he is young, college-aged, like Newt, around the ballpark of nineteen and twenty. His movements are careful, yet each twitch of his fingers or shrug of his shoulders feels purposeful like he is uncomfortable being watched. This is what makes Newt turn away.

“Just up the stairs here, please. Thank you.” 

Thomas unpacks and stacks the crates beside the front door as Vince had done weeks before. Newt feels out of sorts in his skin. It feels wrong somehow to just stand back and watch Thomas do all the hard work. He digs his hands deep in his yellow coat and bites the inside of his cheek as Thomas drops the last of the crates with the others and huffs a deep breath, dusting off his hands.

“Right,” he says, “That’s all of them. I –” he pulls an A7 sized notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket “– made sure to be careful to get everything on the list, but let me know if anything’s missing.”

Newt nods.

“Okay.” Thomas clears his throat. “I’ll be off, then.”

He passes one more polite smile at Newt that doesn’t quite make it all the way to authentic and swings a leg over his bike – ratty, old, rust metal chrome and worn handlebars and a seat that looks like it’s about to fall off. Newt almost wants to tell him not to ride away on it. 

“See you in a month.”

He makes it sound like a gruelling task, not tenaciously, and Newt keeps the cringe internal.

Thomas offers a two-fingered wave as he drives away, and Newt remains stunned by the front door beside the crates, watching the grey vapour dissolve into the atmosphere.

_

Newt learns quickly that Thomas is an incredibly strange person.

Motorcycle responsible for a large percentage of the earth’s carbon footprint aside, there is a general air of Oddness about him that tilts Newt a little off his axis. Because, up until now, _Newt_ was the strangest person Newt had ever met. 

First of all, he walks like his shoes are burning, or like he is hopping over hot stones. Each step is a little _hop hop tip toe_ that is both fascinating to watch and deeply disquieting. He mostly tries to tone it down when he knows Newt is watching him (which he does for the overall time that Thomas is at the lighthouse, hoisting bags of grapefruits on to his shoulders and dumping them by the front door hard enough to bruise) but for the most part – he hops.

Second; he is always warm. It is snowing and the weather never tends to rise above 37 **°** F, but Thomas always appears to be boiling. One time, red-cheeked and beads of sweat forming on his brow and top lip, he’d taken the leather jacket with wool lining off and draped it over the back of the bike, and carried the crates inside in nothing but a thin baseball shirt. Newt, in his three layers of clothing and jacket, absolutely froze. 

He is also – and this is not so much an oddity but rather a casual observation – friendly. Talkative, but not too much. He asks questions, quite a lot of them, mostly about the lighthouse and about Newt, but never anything that would be considered overtly personal. They are casual questions, boring and ordinary, skimming the edge of small talk.

Newt sits back and writes weather observations in his tiny notebook, pretending not to listen to the tune Thomas is humming to himself while he does what he does. At the beginning of March, the wind is not quite as biting anymore, and Newt can manage without the extra layer of clothing. Thomas himself opts for a thinner jacket – corduroy instead of leather, yet he still manages to look like he’s boiling in it.

Newt still keeps his beanie on to hide his roots, which have grown in yet again. Thomas is talking to him about college and Newt is doing his best to ignore him when suddenly a shadow passes over his body, hunched over his knees of the pale, sun-bleached steps. Thomas is standing over him and holding a box out to Newt, that pressed-lipped smile on his face, the one that dimples his left cheek.

“I noticed, so I,” Thomas begins, “I mean I know it’s not on the list but I thought I’d just get some for you. Save you having to go into town and all.”

The box, Newt realises with a quickened pulse, is brown hair dye.

He slowly reaches out to take the box from Thomas’ hand as if possessed, and looks down at the woman on the front – small face surrounded by brown curls that wisp dramatically around her by the use of a wind machine or the Holy Ghost itself, the top reading _Mahogany Brown_.

For a moment Newt panics. His mind rewinds over the last three months like a VCR, running over all the possible moments where Thomas could have seen Newt without his cap, and lands on last month’s supply drop, when he’d come even earlier than usual, muttering that he had a class rescheduled at the last minute and he hoped Newt didn’t mind if he dropped the boxes off earlier so he could make it to campus on time. Newt had just woken up, still in his boots and sleep clothes, ruffled and red-cheeked with the embarrassment of being caught off guard. Thomas had given him a strange, shy look and turned away. Newt’s bed head had been wild and unconcealed.

His jaw drops open, and for a stilled heartbeat, there is nothing but the soft wind and the crash of waves against the shore.

Thomas immediately begins to do damage control.

“I’m sorry, I – is this overstepping? Did I overstep?” he babbles, going on to ask, “Is it the wrong shade, or brand? The store only had one type, and the men’s box dye looks so cheap, so I didn’t want to – Sorry, Newt, I can –”

“Thomas,” Newt says his name, they both realise, out loud for the first time. He allows it to linger on his tongue, tasting the syllables and feeling out how they roll from the back of his throat to the tip of his tongue and float in the air. 

Thomas’ eyes are wide. Newt notices how they glow like honey in the sunlight. 

“It’s fine,” he says, finally, and then, “Thank you.”

Thomas’ mouth twitches oddly in the corners, almost a spasm before it stretches into a smile. Teeth and all.

Thomas gets back to work, and Newt traces the edges of the box with the pads of his fingers. Thomas’ sleeves are rolled to his elbows, exposing freckled skin that is flushed, also. He notices.

He just notices.

_

_METROPOLIS IN MAYHEM! SEVERAL INJURED IN RECENT MUTANT ATTACK,_ today’s newspaper headline reads. Newt is scared to turn on the TV.

He caves after five hours, and the screen is, as expected, flooded with images of a building half torn to shreds. There were mutants, and there were people in blue suits fighting back. As always.

A decade ago, the government put together a secret service of people who were not quite human but not mutants. They were _advanced_. The media called them Supers. Newt called it Stupid.

 _Fighting fire with fire_ , he said to his sister, one time, _how long until they turn on the Supers like they did the Mutants?_

_That won’t happen,_ she argued, _Those guys are home built. They won’t turn on their own super weapon._

She hadn’t been wrong, but just because something hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it never will.

A deep, cold feeling that is all too familiar creeps into Newt’s chest and grips his heart tight and he has to turn off the TV, the back of his eyes stinging.

Newt falls to sleep in the pitch-black darkness, his sketchbook clutched to his chest like a teddy bear, open to a page where a drawing of his sister lives. She is mid-flight, her wings stretched wide and her hair glowing brighter than the sun.

That night he dreams of home.

_

“So, do you own anything less …” Newt pauses and eyes Thomas’ bike, the one he is resting against in a casual lean. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he wipes sweat off his top lip with his thumb.

“Less …” _Looks like it will burst into a ball of flame at the slightest provocation?_ “Ostentatious?” Newt settles with.

“Hm?” Thomas hums, raising his brows. His cheeks are flushed a pretty pink. Newt drums his fingers against the top crate by his hip and gestures, again, towards the bike.

“Do you have a car?”

“Oh,” Thomas laughs, a barking, quick thing. Almost a hiccup. “Yeah, of course.”

Newt is more confused now than ever. He threads a hand through his newly dyed hair, set astray by the wind. The shade Thomas picked out for him is a little lighter than he normally goes for and shines auburn in the sunlight, but he likes it well enough.

“Then why don’t you drive it?” Newt asks, “I just mean, hauling all these crates,” he knocks twice on the top one, “would be a lot easier in something with a couple more wheels on it.”

“Okay.” Thomas kicks off the bike and holds up his index finger, “One; maybe, but I argue – you go through so much food in a month that it doesn’t matter what’s pulling this thing.” Thomas kicks the trailer attached to the bike with his heel, and Newt tries very hard not to flush. It’s his metabolism. It runs faster than most humans, which means he is required to consume more food to balance it. "I’m still gonna have to haul ass across the country, anyway.”

“Two,” Thomas continues, adding his thumb into the mix, “My car’s out of commission. I’ve got it at the mechanic’s being fixed.”

“Oh.” Newt finds himself asking, “What’s wrong with it?”

Thomas snorts with the back of his throat. He’s lingering around the bike, toeing at it with the front of his shoe. Newt fidgets by the front door, leaning against the crates. It’s odd. They never stick around to chit chat, Thomas normally dumping the crates, cracking a parting joke or a salute depending on what mood he is in, and then he is off and Newt returns to work.

Now, today of all days, Newt is overcome with the overwhelming desire to invite Thomas inside.

“It would be easier to list what’s not wrong with it, to tell you the truth,” Thomas says. “I don’t know, it’s just old. But.” He shrugs, looking at his shoes, “I can’t give it up.”

The winds change, or maybe the tides shift, but something in Newt flips when he sees Thomas turn and reach for his bike, and he finds himself saying, “ _Actually_ –” Louder than necessary, his voice jumping in the middle, making Thomas freeze, “do you think you could help? Take these up for me? With –” he coughs, “me?”

Newt wants to slap himself. Thomas is still staring, hands frozen mid-reach for the handlebars.

“Oh,” Thomas does a little jump away from the bike and runs back up the stairs two at a time, “Of course! Yeah!”

Newt, flushing, begins to try and make excuses for himself: “There’s a lot this time, and it’s just I hurt my leg, the other day, and it’s still a bit, uh –”

Thomas shakes his head and waves him off, “No sweat, man.” 

He grabs a sack of potatoes and hoists it over his shoulder like a discombobulated Santa, and Newt is _absolutely_ going to slap himself later. 

The part about the leg – not entirely a lie. He escaped from the events that lead him to the lighthouse with a bad haircut and a bum leg, and the other day when he’d been doing his usual run up and down the stairs he landed oddly on the top landing, and his ankle gave out.

And there is a lot of groceries this time. Newt may have over-ordered.

Thomas, upon entering the lighthouse, stops and takes a brief moment to look around. It reminds Newt of himself when he’d first set foot inside – in awe of the old architecture and faded wooden beams and smooth stone, polished from time and care. The spiral staircase is the focal point of the structure; although only three levels high, if one were to stand in the center and stare straight up you’d think it went on for infinity, the way it melts into the dark shadows. 

Thomas whistles, a high, bird-like call. It echoes.

Newt shows him up to the kitchen on the second landing, carrying a box of lighter fuel (no, he had no intention to just sit back and watch Thomas do all the work, thank you).

“Just set everything down on the table or the countertops. When you run out of room use the floor.”

Thomas sets the potatoes down on Newt’s 4-by-4 table and salutes, flashing a grin, “Got it, boss.”

Newt proceeds the rest of the way up to the top of the lighthouse, breathing deep.

The wind tastes of salt and smells like the ocean when he opens to door to the lantern room. The breeze pushes through the open window and greets Newt like an old friend. The lantern room, surrounded by an octagon of glass walks encasing a light larger than Newt is tall is, by far, his most favourite room in the house. 

Some days Newt walks out on to the small balcony encircling the room and closes his eyes, feeling the sun on his skin and imagining as if he was flying, wings outspread on either side of his body, and fantasising about what it would be like to kick off and soar high above the waters in broad daylight.

(He attempts it every now and then, when the pain in his back is too much to ignore, and when the days are overcast. He shoots up above the clouds like a rocket, where the Earth is still and time does not exist, but he is ever still nervous, panic churning in his stomach like an angry storm the longer he is up, and always looking out for airplanes.)

Today, Newt dumps the box of fuel by the lantern and hurries back downstairs.

Not that Thomas’ presence makes him overtly on edge – Newt doesn’t like people in his home in general, making exceptions for his superiors when they come in every few months for the mandatory inspection – but there is a feeling of unsettlement in his chest that he can’t quite put a name to, knowing that Thomas is down there on his own. So, Newt takes the stairs two at a time.

By the time he returns Thomas has managed to bring what looks like the remainder of the supplies up to the kitchen, creating a sort of pyramid on the dinner/lunch/breakfast table.

Thomas helps him put everything away without Newt asking, who feels as if he is taking advantage of Thomas, a little, but has no desire to ask him to leave. Thomas, living up to his reputation, talks quite a lot.

“So,” he begins, stocking the cabinets with cans of corn kernels, “I don’t think I’ve asked yet, but how long have you worked here? Lived here?”

“Um,” Newt puts away the tomato paste, dusting off his hands, “Just over a year now.”

Thomas nods, moving to the fridge, “Damn. It’s been good to you?”

Newt shrugs. “More or less. It’s a lot cosier than it looks.” 

“Oh, it looks plenty cosy. What made you move here?” Thomas asks, and Newt goes quiet.

A few heartbeats pass before he realises that he isn’t going to get an answer to that question, and a few heartbeats before Newt realises that he has stopped – stopped moving, stopped backing food away.

“Sorry.” Thomas’ voice is a clipped, guilty thing, “I’m being nosy. You don’t have to answer that.”

Newt blinks stars out of his vision. “No, no, it’s alright. I move around a lot.”

Thomas nods. He leans against the countertop, a can of chicken stock in his hands. “Originally … England?” he asks, unsure.

Newt grins, “Scotland, actually. Before here. Before that Wales, and then South England. Switzerland for a little. That was nice.”

Thomas whistles. “Where in Scotland?”

“Have you ever heard of Glencoe?” Newt asks.

“Sounds familiar.”

“Small town in the mountain region. Beautiful in winter, amazing in summer.” Newt breathes deeply _._ “We used to, my family and I, take regular trips up the mountain for fun. Once you reached the top it was –”

Newt cuts himself off. The memory hits hard like a bat in the chest; the mountain peaks, pristine white, the clouds like silk sheets, the chilled wind in his hair, against his wings, his father's boisterous laugh, his mother’s soft voice, his sister’s long hair –

Newt crosses his arms around his middle, and prays Thomas doesn’t notice the shake in his voice when he says, “And you? Have you always lived in Oregon?”

Thomas nods. “Born and raised. Lived in Haven Bay my whole life.”

Newt forces himself to resume putting away the food, asking, _You said you attend university?_ and Thomas answering in a bashful tone, _It’s more of a community college, really. Most of it’s online._ He learns that Thomas has moved out of home, however Haven Bay being as small as it is there are only so many places you can go. He currently lives in a studio apartment above a café that’s a ten-minute walk from his family home. He has a small handful of friends in town, two of which take online courses like him.

Somehow, and Newt really wouldn’t be able to tell you how, he ends up giving Thomas an impromptu tour of the lighthouse.

They begin in the kitchen and head up towards the next level living room/library that Newt doesn’t ever really get much use. A lone armchair sits in a nook wedged between a bookshelf and a side table, where a small stack of books to do with sailing, the open seas, and undiscovered sea creatures (mostly mythology, some actual creatures that surfaced during the Mutant Crisis of 1993) that Newt had been reading steadily throughout the week. The cube television that used to rest against the window now lives upstairs in Newt’s bedroom, which is their next destination.

Newt is – and tries his hardest not to be – all too aware of Thomas’ presence at his back as they climb the spiral to the third level. He’d know he was there if he were to close his eyes and become deaf to the sounds of his footsteps on the metal stairs, and forgot he was there at all. There is a warmth against Newt’s shoulders that he can’t quite explain, like sitting with your back to a space heater or taking a long walk on a sunny, cloudless day.

He opens his mouth to comment (On what? On Thomas’ _body heat?)_ when the man himself whistles upon stepping on to the landing and walking further into Newt’s room, and he says, “So this is where the magic happens?”

Newt stutters and stares at him, cheeks heating, before he notices that Thomas is, of course, referring to the radio equipment left out on Newt’s desk.

“Oh.” Newt clears his throat. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You have to do this every morning?” Thomas asks, picking up Newt’s headset to examine it.

“At the crack of dawn,” Newt replies, sticking his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leaning against the wall. A brown curl falls over his eyebrow.

“Every morning,” Thomas gasps. “Even on weekends?” Newt nods. “Okay. Respect.”

Newt ducks his head to hide a smile. He watches Thomas walk around his bedroom for a minute, trailing him with his eyes as he makes a slow round of the circular room, fingers sometimes trailing over various objects.

“What are you doing?”

“Just looking. You can learn a lot about someone from how they keep their room.”

“Oh yeah? And what does mine tell you?”

“That you’re a lighthouse keeper,” Thomas says, shooting Newt a grin. “But you like to read. A lot. Like seriously …” he pauses by a row of books, dogeared and worn, tracing the pad of his pointer finger over the spines. Newt refuses to flush. “A lot.” 

He shrugs one shoulder. “And?”

Thomas’ eyes widen and his face breaks into a reassuring smile. “And nothing. It’s cool. That you like to read. Books are cool.”

Newt narrows his eyes. Thomas averts his own, immediately searching the room for something else to set his attention on.

“How did you get this job?” Thomas asks.

“Right place right time, I guess,” Newt says. “How did you get yours?”

Thomas has completed his pace around the room and finished where Newt leans against the worn stone. He notices, casually, that Thomas’ eyes turn to the colour of dark chocolate in the shadows. “The same. I needed a job to pay off my classes and I saw this one advertised in a shop window. Looked like easy money.”

“And is it?”

Thomas’ smile is slow and easy when he looks at Newt and says, “It’s pretty good so far.”

Newt finds it incredibly difficult not to smile back.

Then, Thomas looks over and sees Newt’s sketchbook sitting innocently on his nightstand, and turns towards it, asking, “Oh, what’s this?” and it takes everything in Newt’s power not to pounce.

“Uh, that’s, um –” Newt tries but Thomas already has the book in his hands and is opening the cover. “That’s mine –”

“Wow,” Thomas carries on, oblivious, flipping pages with reckless abandon, and the only thing Newt can think of is, _My sister. My sister with wings!_ “These are pretty good.”

Newt hovers nervously behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Thank you, Thomas.”

“When did you learn?”

The page flips to a small otter happily diving into water, and flips again to anther of a deer with glowing eyes.

“I’ve just … always known? Thomas, can I –”

Newt thinks, _He’s warm_ , and he also thinks, _This is not the time_.

“Damn, these are really –”

“Tommy, can I just –” Bones nearly jumping out of his skin with apprehension, Newt says _Fuck it_ and leans over Thomas’ shoulder to snatch the book out of his hands and grip it tight to his chest. Thomas blinks, stunned, staring at the empty space between his fingers where the notebook used to be. “I’m sorry, some of those are private.”

“No, I’m the one who should be apologising,” Thomas says, “I should have asked first.”

A part of Newt wants to tell him it’s okay and No Big Deal but the worn edges of his sketchbook are pressing against his fingers and the drawing of his sister is pressed tight to his chest, so what Newt says is, “I have quite a bit of work to get on with, so …”

“Yeah.” Thomas snaps to attention. “Yeah, of course. Me too. I’ll get out of your hair.”

He walks Thomas to the bottom and waves bye to him from the threshold of the front door. When Thomas is gone Newt shuts the door tight and presses his forehead to the cool wood, and takes a long, deep breath.

_

The sea is a tranquil bedsheet of diamonds under the slowly rising sun, and Newt feels restless.

News coverage of an attack on Athens by creatures with blue skin who walked on all fours brought upon dreams of home. Afterward, the walls felt too close and the screech in the floor too loud, so Newt loosened his binds and took a leap off the lantern room balcony, and soared under the cover of the new moon until dawn.

He returned only to give the regular weather report _(Cloudy, high chance of rain, high tide. Thoroughly do not recommend surfing or sailing of any kind)_ before deciding to cash in a personal day of leave and taking a walk up and down the beach.

The beach is a moderately flat, open space curtained by hills of wheat coloured grass that serves as a gentle fade into the white sky backdrop of the morning. Fog makes everything look muted and still, and the landscape blocks the sound of cars on the highway.

Oregon remains temporally cool through February into March and onwards, and this morning he really feels it.

_(Fresh brewed coffee, roasted nuts over fire, grass in the spring time, dragonflies – )_

A seagull flies overhead and caws loudly, and Newt starts. It’s time to go inside.

_

Newt’s dreams, the nights when he does dream, range from the ordinary and boring, to the moderately depressing and then, finally, the downright embarrassing.

The ordinary and boring: He is walking along the beach on a sunny day, the waves lapping at his ankles and seafoam tickling between his toes. The air tastes like cotton candy. Or, he is in the Haven Bay fruit market buying a bag of grapefruit, but his winds are outstretched, and other shoppers have to dodge them.

The depressing: All the letters he writes to his mother, father and sister are returned to him. He should have known, really, considering he hadn’t written an address on them. He waits on the shoreline or on the lantern room balcony and watches the horizon for winged creatures that never come. 

Finally, the embarrassing: Thomas has taken it upon himself to appear every now and then. The dreams are nothing too explicit, either, which makes the fact all the more embarrassing. It’s just Thomas, delivering supplies, taking them up, talking to Newt, brushing his hair back with his fingers when the wind tousles it around. Sometimes he lingers longer than he does in the real world, sometimes he comes up and they’re taking a tour of the lighthouse again, and other times he is up in Newt’s bedroom, making a slow round of the room like he had done before, except this time when he stops beside Newt there is a stilled moment, a pause in the dreamscape, before he slowly begins to lean in.

In the morning Newt will wake with a groan in his throat, pressing his fists to his eyes and waiting for the self-deprecation to fizzle out. 

It’s not that he’s high strung, per se, and he certainly isn’t a little kid who blushes and runs to their diary whenever a cute boy so much as looks at him. It just doesn’t help much that Thomas is young and attractive and decently pleasant to be around most times, and Newt’s daily interactions consist of monotoned voices over the radio, sullen faced register workers fighting to stay away through their graveyard shifts, and seagulls. So, the options are low.

Not that Thomas is an option. Their relationship is strictly professional.

 _Strictly_.

 _Strictly STRICTLY professional,_ Newt repeats to himself, when he is just returning to the lighthouse from a walk on the beach, and his chest does a sort of leap when he sees the wonder of modern motor vehicle technology parked out the front, corroding into the earth. And its rider, already unpacking.

It takes Newt a few minutes to job down the long stone driveway until he reaches Thomas, and when he does, he greets him with a strong, “Hi!” a little louder than necessary. 

Thomas jumps, whirling around. A can of something escapes the box he is holding and bounces to the ground. Newt hurries to catch it before it can roll into the water.

“Hi yourself,” Thomas says with a soft laugh, re-adjusting his hold on the box. “I didn’t know if you were home so I was just leaving these by the front.”

“That’s fine,” he says, “I was just taking a walk. Here, let me help you.”

Newt reaches forward and attempts to take the box out of Thomas’ hands, but the latter dodges him and pulls it out of reach.

“No, no, I got it,” Thomas says, “It is my job, after all.”

Newt unlocks the door for him to dump the boxes in the bottom room. Thomas tries to take them up to the kitchen like last month but Newt insists he leaves them there. Thomas tries to slip by but Newt blocks his way with both hands on either railing. There is a sort of back and forth where Thomas shifts to the left and Newt shifts to the left, Thomas quickly tries to parry to the right but Newt is faster, and the end result is Thomas surrendering and dumping the boxes by the staircase with a mock frown.

Thomas complains about classes (he is debating switching his major), his friends (they’re annoying, but he loves them) and his car (still at the shop, still “healing”, and Newt still isn’t entirely convinced she exists) for a while, tossing a red apple back and forth. Taking a bite of the apple, his eyes widen in horror because this is meant to be one of Newt’s apples, and Newt has to hastily reassure him that, _My god, Tommy, you can have the bloody apple. No, really, I don’t even like them that much …_ because for a moment Thomas looks as if he is about to do something stupid like spit the bite out and offer it back to Newt. 

Which, look.

He’s cute, but even Newt has his limits. 

When Thomas leaves after sunset (he decided to stick around for a bit, and Newt, pretending he wasn’t overly pleased by this, shirted his afternoon duties in favour of spending a couple of hours with Thomas watching Netflix on Newt’s rickety old bed) Newt is full of so much pent up energy be decides to go for a fly.

(After two hours of sitting with Thomas pressed up against his shoulder and thigh, feeling rather than hearing the giggles run through his body, fresh air to clear one’s head is highly necessary.)

The sky is deep indigo above the clouds, and Newt takes a leisurely stroll – no flips or twirls or other acrobatic maneuvers he is otherwise partial to, just a slow glide above the white fluffy clouds. He stretches his wings until he feels sated enough to fly back down, landing on the railing of the lantern room balcony like a dancer; one foot then two, jumping down, his wings fluttering out and curling in as if they were bowing to an invisible audience.

He keeps them out, figuring they could use a little extra wiggle room for a little while. Humming to himself lightly, Newt packs away the laptop and neatens up his desk so it is ready for his end of night routine – there are boats passing through tonight, and he needs to prepare for that. Room tidied, books put away and bedsheets straightened once again, Newt heads down to make some dinner, still humming.

Maybe it’s the humming or maybe it is the light-headed distracted feeling, head still up in the clouds, that he fails to hear the sounds of someone rustling around in the kitchen before it’s too late.

“Hey, there you are,” Thomas says as Newt steps down into the kitchen. His back is to Newt but at the sound of Newt’s footsteps, he begins to turn. “Sorry, just me. The door was unlocked so I just let myself in –”

Newt is frozen in his shoes. Nothing – no power in the whole world – could have helped him pull his wing faster than Thomas could turn. They hang there from his back, awkwardly pressed to Newt’s arms given the narrow threshold between the staircase and kitchen arch.

Thomas is holding a bag of grapefruits. His eyes are wide, his mouth opens in shock. He stares directly at Newt’s wings.

“I –”

Newt wants to be sick.

“I –” Thomas tries, “I left these –”

He is absolutely going to be sick.

“In the trailer.”

A grapefruit falls out of the bag, rolls to the edge of the room and down the stairs. They listen to it bounce, step by step, for a little while before it escapes out the side and plummets to the bottom of the lighthouse with a loud _Splat!_

This is what breaks the spell for both of them.

“Listen,” Thomas says at the same time Newt says, “Look,” and they’re taking over each other. Thomas puts the bag on the table and begins to move forward with his palms outstretched.

“Newt, listen.”

“Thomas, don’t.” Newt’s wings finally curl up and go back inside. Thomas’ eyes widen even more at this. “Please don’t.”

“I’m not – no, I’m not going to do anything –”

“Where is your phone?”

Thomas frowns. “What?”

Newt leans forward and does his best impression of intimidating despite being terrified to the bone. “Do not call anyone. If you call anyone, Thomas, I swear –” His wings press against the back of his shirt, completely on their own. The jerked movement makes Thomas start and stand back.

“Newt, listen to me for a second, okay?” His pals are still up, eyes still wide, and if Newt wasn’t battling between fight or flight, he would have noticed that all the fear in Thomas’ eyes are gone, if it was there at all. “I’m not going to call the police, or the government, or the media or whatever it is you’re thinking. I’m not, okay?”

“Why?” Newt asks, eyes narrowing warily.

“Because.” Thomas stops and sighs. He then pulls out a chair from the table. “Will you come and sit down?”

“No.”

“Okay, then I’ll sit.” Thomas sits. Newt remains by the wall. He could bring his wings back out, he could fly away, he could –

“You’re a Mutant,” Thomas says. Not a question.

“Yes,” Newt says.

“Okay, cool.” Thomas claps his hands together, “So am I.”

The earth stands still, and Newt gasps, “What?”

“I,” Thomas presses a hand to his chest, “am also a mutant, Newt. Just like you. Well, not _just_ like you. I’m different. But, wow, I was right. I mean I thought you were. I had a hunch, you know? There was just something … odd about you. I don’t mean that in a bad way! Just –”

“Thomas.”

“Yeah?”

“Please shut up.”

“Yeah, 'course.”

Newt presses his fists to his eyes until he sees stars, breathing deeply in and out. “I don’t have time for this,” he groans. “I have boats passing through tonight.”

“Oh,” Thomas fidgets in the chair, eye darting to the window.

Newt takes one last deep breath and pushes off from the wall. “You’re a Mutant? Really?”

Thomas’ eyes are earnest and wide when he answers, “Yes,” but Newt still tells him, “Prove it.”

“Okay,” Thomas nods, standing up, and Newt prepares himself for … whatever it is he should be preparing himself for. Thomas wrings his hands nervously, looking once more around the room before asking, “Do you have any sunglasses?”

Newt blinks. “Sunglasses? Why?”

Thomas looks pained. “It’s just better if you have sunglasses on.”

“Just fucking do it, Tommy.”

“Alright.” Thomas shakes his wrists out, rolls his shoulders back, and stretches his neck. Newt steps back out of caution. “Fair warning but it’s about to get a little bright in here.”

It begins at his fingertips – a soft glow at first, like candlelight or like he is holding a small firefly between his fingers. Then it spreads over his palms, over his wrists and up to his arms. Thomas rolls his neck as if he's trying to work out a kink when the light reaches his collarbones, beneath his clothes, and for a long, stilled moment, Newt isn't entirely sure what he is seeing, but a moment after that he understands Thomas' recommendations for sunglasses.

What began as a soft glow has encompassed Thomas' entire body in a ball of light, and it takes everything in Newt not to look away despite his eyes watering. The light isn't just bright but it's warm, too, the kind of warmth you feel on your skin on a hot summer’s day, or sitting before a fire when it is snowing outside. Then he realises that the light has not just engulfed Thomas' body, but has become Thomas' body – glowing beneath his skin. 

Finally, Newt looks away gasping, hand shooting up to his eyes. A soft, "Oh," is heard from the ball of light and the brightness dims to something manageable. 

Newt, rubbing his eyes, turns back to Thomas to find him, now simply a humanoid being of light, standing with his arms outstretched. "Ta da!" he says. 

“Okay," Newt murmurs, "I believe you." 

The being of light drops his arms. The being of light looks quite pleased with himself, despite Newt not being able to make out any distinct facial features. 

The light slowly dims until it is gone and Thomas once again stands in the room as he was. Now, back again, Newt notices he looks vaguely nervous. 

"So …" Thomas begins, "What do you think?"

"I think," Newt says, "I've been wasting way too much money on lighter fluid for way too long."

There is a pause, then Thomas begins to laugh. So does Newt, and the two of them remain there for a short while; in the middle of a small and cramped lighthouse kitchen, laughing.

_

“So, were you dropped into a tub of radioactive waste as a baby too, or?” 

Newt looks at Thomas. Thomas lets the joke hang in the air for a heartbeat before grimacing.

Newt continues, “Is it your whole family who … glows, or is it just you?”

“Just me, yeah,” Thomas says, slipping his hands into his pockets and nodding at his feet. They’ve decided to take a walk down the beach today and talk things over.

Thomas didn’t stay over the night before, though he probably should have given how early it is he returned this morning. He’d been subjected to sitting around Newt’s room while he took care of morning business (weather watching, tide analyzing) commenting, _You’re a regular meteorologist, huh?_

Eventually, Newt told him that if he were to insist on lazing around ( _Don’t you have class?_ He asked. _Only one today,_ Thomas answered, _but the professor cancelled it due to food poisoning)_ he could make himself useful and go make them breakfast.

He did, surprisingly, and when Newt finished drawling into a microphone, he was pleased to find two healthy fruit salads and some orange juice waiting for him downstairs.

Now, here they are; on the beach. The sky is overcast and the breeze is light. Now, with the knowledge of what Thomas is, it is almost impossible to ignore the heat coming off of him at phenomenal levels. What state of denial had Newt been in before not to _realise?_

“That I know of, at least,” Thomas carries on, and Newt blinks himself back to the present. “My family’s always been pretty small and pretty ordinary. If anyone else had anything like I do, I would have known, right?”

Newt shrugs. It’s April, but he still needs his jacket. Thomas strolls about in only a T-shirt and jeans. Newt wonders how much he feels the cold. He also wonders if, if Newt didn’t know about him, he would still be keeping up the ruse and suffering in a woollen jumper right now.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Could have been an estranged relative, or a great, great, great grandmother. It has to come from somewhere.”

Thomas hums thoughtfully.

“What about you?”

“It’s my whole family, yes,” Newt says, watching the line of the cliffs in the distance, and the waves crashing against it. “Going back decades.”

“Shit,” Thomas says, “So there’s a whole clan of fluffy winged people.”

Newt gives him a side-eyed glare. Thomas tries not to look too pleased.

“So, you’ve known you had wings your whole life?”

“For as long as I can remember.”

“I imagine they were, like, little cherub wings at one point, right? Could you fly with them? Were you like those nightmares new parents have of their babies growing wings and ending up on the roof?”

“Oh, yes, the size of chicken wings, thank you,” Newt spits. Thomas snorts. “And no. The flight came later. Sort of like learning to walk and talk. You still need to learn to fly. What about you? Have you always been a Christmas tree or did that come later?”

They’ve approached a cavern in the cliff-face where the stone stretches over their heads in a giant arch, and birds fly in and out a mile above. Thomas’ laugh echoes inside it, twining with the beat of their wings. 

“Good question. Not sure.” Thomas says, “I just remember being ten and waking up one day and being able to do what I do. Glow.”

“Do your parents know?”

Thomas goes quiet for a moment, and Newt worries he’s asked the wrong question. Then, he says, “I’m not sure. Some days I think there’s no way they don’t know. Like, they’d look at me funny or they would have a strange tone in their voice, but other times … I don’t know. They’ve never said anything.” 

Newt doesn’t quite know what to say to this, but in the end what comes out is, “Maybe you were bitten. By a radioactive spider.”

Thomas gives him a _look_. “Hilarious.”

They are walking back to the lighthouse when Thomas has a brilliant idea and decides, against any better judgment, to share.

“Hey, Newt, do you go into town much?”

“Now and then. Why?”

Thomas, hands still in his pockets, kicks a stone where it bounces into the water. “Just thinking. I have a free day, you have a free day … do you want to get some lunch in town?”

Newt gapes. “I do not have a free day, Tommy, I have work to do,” he says, pointing weakly at the lighthouse.

Thomas looks from Newt to the lighthouse and then back at Newt. Some sort of decision is written on his face that worries Newt. “How often do you leave the bay?”

“To go into town?” Newt says, warily, “Every now and then. Mostly at midnight so I can fly there. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he gestures to their rocky, watery, and lighthouse-y surroundings, “I don’t have the luxury of transport like you do.”

Thomas nods, slowly, and says, “You do today,” shoe toeing the sand under his foot, a small, hopeful smile on his face, and _god damnit_. 

_

Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to Newt that he would need to be on the bike until he was _on the bike_.

After texting his superiors, _I’m taking a few hours off to visit town,_ and without thinking about their shock over the fact that the hermit is leaving his cave for once, Newt climbed on the back of the motorcycle. There is a lot less space on these things than he had anticipated, especially if there is another person on it with you and especially if that other person is in the front. At first, Newt tries his best to give Thomas as much space as possible, sliding all the way to the edge of the seat and resting his hands loosely on Thomas’ shoulders (Warm, very warm, even on top of the denim jacket he’s put on – for appearances only, Newt realises now).

Thomas looks at Newt over his shoulder, his chin brushing against his knuckles. “I know you can fly but I don’t really want you flying off the back of this bike. Hold on tighter.”

Slowly, Newt slides closer on the seat until he is pressed almost completely against Thomas’ back, and slides his arms around his waist.

“Okay,” Thomas says, voice odd, “Let's go.”

Despite looking like a death trap the thing dives fairly well, Newt will give it that. He still needs to hold on tighter whenever Thomas drives around a particularly sharp turn and tries to ignore the rumble of laughter he feels against his chest for it. If Newt thought he could let go the slightest bit without falling he would be flipping him off right now.

Countless times he has flown over this highway but he’s never seen it in the day time. In the night where the trees are clustered, dark shapes trailing the road, in the day it is all wide open and bright – green trees and brown, sun-bleached roads overlooking a waterfront of the sparkling ocean as far as the eye could see.

He finds himself lost for a moment in the way the wind feels against the skin of his cheeks as they ride along the highway towards Haven Bay. It feels a lot like flying.

They roll into the main town of Haven Bay, and Newt is again shocked at how different it looks in the day time. The old wood-paneled houses with their neatly kept front yards of square trimmed hedges, an array of flower bushes and sun-bleached picket fences are light and almost cheery, wherein the night Newt has always viewed them as cold and secluded, a _Keep Away_ sign outlined in red paint the further along you go. 

Thomas drops to the speed limit of 30 mph as they pass numerous mid-century motels, log cabins and highway side restaurants until finally turning into one in particular – a two-story café/restaurant on a side street off the main strip. He parks the bike at a chaotic 40-degree angle in a parking space out the front, and Newt finally swings his legs off the back of the bike.

The café, charmingly named The Salty Seahorse _,_ is tastefully decked out to the high heavens in a 1940s nautical theme. Fishing nets with fake, multi-coloured trout hang off the back of booths, and lighting pieces in the shape of life preservers float above their heads. It’s somewhat like the Crusty Crab got a visit from the property brothers, and Newt is having a hard time deciding whether or not he likes it. 

Thomas wastes no time in steering him over to a corner booth by a large, scoping window overlooking the streetscape. When Newt is seated, Thomas on his left, flipping through the menu (although Newt has a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t need it) he instantly begins to fidget with his binds. They feel itchy against his skin, and he’s paranoid they’re showing under the collar of his jumper. Eventually, he settles for pulling the sleeves over his knuckles and slouching in the seat until his knees touch the metal legs of the table.

Thomas is watching him. Newt gives him a _head-shake-eyebrow-raise_. Thomas snorts.

“Okay,” he says, putting down the menu, “I see why you don’t come out in the day time.”

“Yeah, well,” Newt shrugs and allows the sentence to trail off.

“You need to relax,” Thomas says, squinting at the list of coffees and other warm beverages (again, probably not needed) “Be casual. You draw less attention to yourself that way.”

“That’s your technique, is it?” Newt asks, eyeing Thomas’ flushed cheeks and rolled up sleeves.

“My core temperature is 109 degrees Fahrenheit, what’s your excuse?”

Newt leans forward, “I have an extra _two_ _bloody_ _arms_ –”

“Hi.” Newt jumps at the sound of a new voice looming over them – high, feminine, strikingly bored. “My name is Teresa and I’ll be your server today. What can I get you?”

“Hey, Teresa,” Thomas turns away from Newt with a faintly smug grin on his face Newt would love to wipe off. “What’s with the theatre script?”

The girl standing before them blinks. She’s tall, very pretty, and looks like she’s just woken from a long nap, dark hair barely held up with a clip. “Oh,” she says, bilking a few times, “It’s you. Sorry, late night. What’s up? Oh, hello.”

Her eyes turn to Newt and he feels himself instantly stiffen. He sits up and rests his palms on the table, trying very hard not to look at Thomas. He isn’t used to people seeing him in the daylight.

“New friend?” She asks Thomas, eyebrow quirking half an inch.

“Yeah,” Thomas clears his throat, “This is Newt. Newt, Teresa.”

“Ahh,” Teresa hums, nodding sagely, “The lighthouse keeper. Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. What kind of a name is Newt?”

Newt narrows his eyes. “What kind of a name is Teresa?”

“Old. Grandma debutante. Yours?”

“Not actually a real name.”

Teresa nods, like she can respect that. Then, without waiting for either of them to say another word, she snaps her notepad shut and announces, “Two espressos coming right up,” and leaves.

They watch her go. Thomas says, “Not sure if she meant for us or for herself.”

Newt, surprising himself, laughs.

“That’s, uh,” Thomas laughs too, softly under his breath, waving a hand at Teresa’s back disappearing into the kitchen, “That’s Teresa. We go way back. She’s cool. Doesn’t sleep much. What were we talking about? Ah yes, your extra limbs.”

“Could I,” Newt begins, cringing, “possibly interest you in keeping your voice down?”

“Maybe,” Thomas says, shrugging. Then he leans in, all fun and games gone from his eyes, and he tells Newt, “It’s a lot easier, Newt, if you pretend that you don’t have anything to hide. Then, eventually, you start to forget that you do.”

His eyes flicker upwards to Newt’s hairline for a split second – so fast that if Newt blinked he’d miss it – where he knows his roots have grown in over an inch. He’s been lazy with the colour this month and last, and the curls are even beginning to fall below his ears. To be honest, he hadn’t thought about his hair that much as of late, mind occupied with other things, but now the consciousness comes back, and his fingers curl at his knees, missing his beanie.

Newt leans back into his seat and shifts his gaze out the window. A young family walks past, stopping briefly so the youngest can gawk at a dog across the road. Slowly, Newt says, “Fine. I’ll take your advice.”

He doesn’t see Thomas’ smile, but their small nook suddenly becomes a little warmer.

Teresa delivers the espressos, and Newt is nearly knocked over backward by the sheer strength.

_

The Salty Seahorse, Newt learns, is the café Thomas lives above.

He doesn’t get to see inside his small apartment, an excuse of "It looks like a bomb hit it" thrown out there, and instead they hop back on the bike and Thomas drives him to the auto body mechanic where – low and behold – the mythical car is.

Existing, against all odds. 

The lime green Ford Cortina is an acquired taste, one hundred percent, and honestly doesn’t look like it would fair much better on the open road than the two-wheeled tricycle Thomas currently has them gallivanting across town on, but there is something about it that changes Thomas’ entire demeanour when they enter the garage.

He talks to the mechanic, whom he greets with a hand-clasp-back-slap, in almost a different language about progress and service upgrades and parts and other Car Speak Newt doesn’t understand for a few minutes while he tries not to lurk awkwardly, or appear so. Thomas climbs inside at once point to test the engine, looking moderately satisfied after a few revs, and Newt busies himself with a short tour of the garage, looking at the photographs of mechanics line the walls, dating all the way back to the 30s and 40s.

Eventually, after 20 minutes or so, Thomas meets Newt over by a table with an array of parts spread out over it like a jewellery stall.

“Sorry about that,” he says, saddling up next to him.

Newt shrugs. “Everything looking good?”

“Most of it, yeah. Still some kinks to iron out, I won’t bore you with the details.”

As they’re leaving and Thomas is sitting on the bike and offering the second helmet to Newt, he confesses to him, “It was my grandfather’s car.”

And suddenly Newt understands completely. 

_

The final stop of the day is a comic book store.

“What are we doing here?” Newt asks, the bell ringing above his head when they enter the shop. The girl behind the counter files her nails with a bright pink nail file and doesn’t look up as they walk inside.

Thomas has a somewhat mischievous gleam in his eye that, to be honest, frightens Newt a little bit, especially given the way he takes Newt’s wrist and leads him wordlessly down the aisle of books.

Newt has never been one for comic books, personally, but right now it’s hard not to stare in awe at the startling array of colour explosions at every corner, stretching from the floor to high above his head. The further deeper inside they travel the more Newt realises the sheer magnitude of this shop and leaves him to wonder what business Haven Bay, a fishing town the size of a spec of dust on the map, has doing with a comic book store this large.

As if reading his mind, Thomas leans in to whisper, “I know. Used to be a grocery store. There’s more than just comics in here, though,” he goes on to explain, ticking them off his fingers, “there are graphic novels, international books, artbooks, self-published comics, etcetera. Oh, here.”

Thomas pulls him into an isle labelled _Marvel_ that seems to travel on for infinity. After a minute of searching the rows of books with narrowed eyes and muttering to himself, Thomas finally announces, “Ah ha!” and plucks a single comic from the middle shelf.

He waves it at Newt for a moment before Newt gets the hint and takes the comic out from him. The front cover illustrates a very serious looking man with long blonde hair and inhuman muscles, with large white wings that look like they could slice you right in half on either side of his body. The top of the comic reads _X-Men: Archangel._

Newt feels confused yet oddly touched. “Tommy?”

“See.” Thomas shrugs. “You’re everywhere. Here –” he points at the comic, “You’re a god damn superhero.”

Newt shakes his head, a stunned laugh escaping his lips. “I … I’m not a superhero, Tommy.”

“You say that now,” Thomas says. Newt rolls his eyes.

They spend a little while longer in the store, Newt becomes fascinated with the array of options, and they end up leaving the store with a bag.

Thomas buys Newt the Archangel comic, which he does not know about until later when he’s getting ready for bed and finds it on his pillow. A yellow sticky note sits on the front cover, and reads in what he assumes is Thomas’ messy scrawl:

 _He even looks like you_ :) 

_

“I think we should start our own superhero team,” Thomas says one day, out of the blue.

It is nearing the end of May and the warm, seasonal weather is approaching along with it. Newt sits sideways on his bed with Thomas with him. They aren’t pressed shoulder to shoulder yet Newt can feel the warmth of him inches away. He welcomes it.

“I’m sorry,” Newt puts down his book, “ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. Like our own band of brothers, or something.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Maybe, or we could … like …”

“Put up an ad on craigslist?”

“Fist of all, I only just taught you what craigslist was two weeks ago, don’t use it against me. Second, why not?”

“Why n – well, Tommy, I could give you a list of reasons why not.”

Thomas takes a chip out of the bag between them and begins to chew very loudly, pretending he can’t hear Newt. Newt shoves him, and Thomas shoves back, and before either of them know it they’re engaged in a shoving fight where, instead of one coming out victorious, they decide on a truce before someone ends up on the floor. 

“We should become a team,” Thomas carries on like nothing happened, “Like the Avengers.”

“The Avengers are comic book characters, Tommy.”

“Yeah, but – _Yes_. But like those Super guys who run around in the blue uniforms and –”

“Put people like us behind bars?” Newt says.

“Ye – no.” Thomas says, “Bad example.”

Newt hums. “What would our crime-fighting duo name be? Wingman and Glowboy? That sounds like a couple of cheap strippers you’d hire off craigslist for a hens night.”

“Craigslist! Also,” Thomas takes another chip, “I resent that. And why am I the sidekick in this scenario?”

Newt takes a chip out of his bag and keeps his lips pressed. 

_

It’s become a bit of a regular occurrence; the two of them hanging out. Thomas has been dropping by on his days off from school and Newt has been cashing in more of his personal leave that he has accumulated over one and a half years. Often times they just laze around the lighthouse, go on walks, or occasionally go into town (the bike is still on thin ice but Newt is, admittedly, getting used to it. It’s not _all_ bad, he reasons). He is also becoming acquainted with more of Thomas’ friends – Minho, a friend from high school who studies real estate and does not look an inch like it, Harriet and Brenda who are more so friends with Teresa and with Thomas by association, and Gally: he’s, well, he’s there but doesn’t look particularly happy about it.

The café is a regular stop for them, Newt often staying downstairs chatting with Teresa while Thomas runs up to his apartment to “Take care of some things”. He finds he likes her the most beside Minho and learns that she owns an Etsy store (and then learns what an Etsy store is). He’s impressed.

She makes handcrafted things like bowls and coasters but mostly she knits blankets and is fairly good at it, too. The store is also apparently one of the reasons she doesn’t get much sleep.

One day, when Thomas is upstairs doing whatever it is he was doing, and Newt is sitting at the table with Teresa, on her break, and Minho, also on a break from his apprenticeship, smart blazer creased at the elbows and navy blue tie crooked, she tells Newt of a client whom she had been knitting a blanket for who backed out because Teresa had accidentally used the wrong colour for one of the threads.

“What?” Minho squawks, looking up from his phone, “Bullshit.”

Newt thought it was bullshit, too, even though he didn’t quite know how these things worked.

“Yeah,” Teresa yawns, drawing a spiral pattern with her finger on the table, “It sucks, but what can you do? Hey, Newt, you mentioned how that big old lighthouse of yours gets pretty cold?”

“Um. I did?”

Teresa stands up from the table. “Be right back.” She leaves.

Thomas has been gone for a while, Newt realises, and asks Minho, “What is he doing up there?”

“Who knows,” he shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee without using his arms to pick it up – just leaning over the table to slurp at it straight out of the mug. “He’s a pretty weird dude.”

Fair enough.

Then, Minho says, “More so lately than usual,” turning to Newt with a meaningful look in his eye, which in turn makes Newt want to shrink below the table.

With Thomas there’s … something. Newt isn’t quite sure what, but it’s Something. He is also not sure what to do with the Something, or if he even wants to do anything with it. He is perfectly happy with what they already have between them, and Newt had been secluded in the lighthouse for so long he’d forgotten what having an actual friend was like, let alone one who understood how it felt to have to hide a part of yourself away from the world.

Some days he can push the Something to the back of his mind and just enjoy Thomas’ company; his high energy and his odd humour, but other days he hears the rev of the motorcycle’s engine approaching and the Something sparks up inside him so strong it’s impossible to ignore.

Now, Newt feels a bit like a little girl fighting off the urge to ask his crush’s best friend if he likes him.

He doesn’t get the chance to humiliate himself, as an alarm on Minho’s phone goes off right as Teresa appears back at the table, carrying a folded-up blanket in her arms.

“Shit,” he swears, “I gotta get back. I’ll see you around. Oh hey, Newt, I’m having a small thing next week for my birthday, you should come.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah, I’ll try. Thanks.”

He gives a quick two-fingered wave and leaves.

Alone now, Teresa slides the blanket – knitted, colourful woven patterns of red, blue, green, orange and white – towards Newt.

“For you. Because it gets cold at night. When Thomas isn’t there,” she adds, and Newt feels his entire body blush.

“Thank you,” he says, pulling the blanket closer and feeling how soft it is. He feels touched and unworthy, but her last comment is nagging at the back of his mind, and tapping his fingernails three times on the table, Newt bites the bullet and leans forward to ask, “Does he –”

“Talk about you? _All_ the time. But also,” Teresa shifts closer to Newt in the booth, angling her body more towards the window than the rest of the café and pulling her hair out from behind her ear so it falls like a curtain, and closing her eyes. Newt is very confused until they re-open, and he sees the whites of them replaced with a sapphire blue that melts seamlessly into her irises.

Newt starts, jaw falling open in shock. Teresa’s mouth slowly curls into a smirk.

After a heartbeat or five, during which Newt’s mouth tries to catch up with his brain to garble something intelligible, he stutters out, “You too?”

She nods. “Me too. Minho as well.”

Newt is shaking his head. “Unbelievable.” 

Teresa’s smirk turns into a genuine smile, and when she blinks her eyes return to normal. She tells Newt about how she Sees things; not literal, but more in a sort of subjective, abstract sense. It’s mostly how she knows Newt is always cold in the lighthouse and how he could use another thicker blanket, approaching Summer and all. “Also,” she says, “Thomas is always complaining about how damn cold it is in there. _Him!_ ”

When Thomas returns, flushed and wearing a thin shirt rolled up at the sleeves, Teresa taps her nose at Newt and winks, sliding up from the table to get back to serving customers. Thomas takes her place with a timid grimace. “Sorry. What did I miss?”

Newt can only say, “Teresa.”

“Oh,” Thomas’ eyes grow wide. “She told you. Cool, huh? Who knew there were so many of us running around, here of all places?”

Newt looks at Teresa standing at a table taking a customer’s order, and out the window towards where the real estate agency Minho temps at is, and murmurs, “Who knew.”

That night he falls asleep under Teresa’s handmade blanket and dreams of his sister. She is happy for him, tells him she likes his new friends, and that she’s glad he’s trying to be happy. When he asks her where she is, she laughs and walks away, her voice carrying in the air like bells.

_

Thomas tells him, sometime in July, that he’s never had an encounter with another Mutant like himself, even after consulting Google.

“I don’t know,” he says, skipping a stone across the water, “Maybe we’re just really good at hiding. Or maybe there's only me.”

After completing his morning rounds earlier than usual, Newt flies into town early one morning when the moon is still up and lingers in town, and finds that Haven Bay is nice to just exist in in the early hours of the morning. Stores begin to open their shutters and set up their windows, the early risers pass by on their morning runs, and fishermen drive through with their boats attached to the back of their trucks, ready to start the day.

Newt’s stomach rumbles, and he decides breakfast would be a good idea.

The Salty Seahorse opens swiftly at 7AM and Newt is the first customer, greeted by a glassy-eyed, yawning Teresa with bed-head. She doesn’t look particularly surprised to see him and takes his order with a furtive, knowing look in her eye.

He eats his breakfast and afterward idly doodles in his sketchbook and watches the world go by outside until 7:45 rolls around and it’s time to start walking.

Newt follows the route Thomas took them over a month ago on the motorbike and eventually lands out the front of the comic book store. 

The shop is quiet when he walks in, looks around for a second before turning to the cashier. It’s the same girl as last time, pink-tipped hair tied up so that it sticks out in every which direction in a punk revival aesthetic, the makeup to boot.

Newt places his hands on the counter and asks, “Would you happen to know of any superheroes that glow?”

_

Newt paces anxiously around the kitchen.

Thomas is due any minute and he feels stupidly nervous and stupid for feeling nervous. The comic book hides rolled up in his back pocket and is burning a hole through the fabric. He spent a good hour in the store with the girl (Sam, lead singer in a band, has dreams of becoming a professional dog breeder) and together, after a lot of scouring and googling, they found it – hidden among a niche collection of comics from the golden age.

“You got lucky,” Sam said, ringing him up and popping her gum in time with the cash register. “What made you want to go on this crazy goose chase, anyway?” 

Newt shrugged, accepting the bag from her, and said, “Just a hunch.”

The sound of a motorbike revs in the distance, and Newt’s heart almost jumps into his throat. He waits until he hears the distinct sound of the engine cut off before climbing the stairs, trying not to walk too fast or be ostentatiously too slow. 

(Thomas probably can’t see through walls, yes, but until four months ago he had no idea he glowed, either, so who anything is possible.)

Thomas is leaning over the metal side of the trailer to hoist a box out when Newt opens the door, and upon hearing this, he immediately puts on his best impression of a 1940s paperboy.

“Special delivery,” he drawls without breathing through this nose. “Get ‘em while ‘ere hot! Fresh! All the way from Haven Bay’s very best –”

Thomas turns and sees Newt, and almost drops the box.

Newt fights the urge not to flush from his ears to his toes.

Along with the comic book, Newt had also purchased a new box of hair dye. _Very Blonde_ , the box said. Is the end result Very Blonde? Oh yes. Does it look just like the smooth, ashy waves on the box? Debatable.

Thomas gapes. Newt pretends nothing is out of the ordinary.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey,” Thomas murmurs back.

“I, uh. I got tired of dying it all the time, so ...”

“It looks good,” Thomas says, his smile growing. “Inside?”

Newt welcomes Thomas upstairs where he drops the months’ worth of supplies in the kitchen anywhere they’ll fit. The two begin putting everything away as they usually do, and Newt forgets he even has anything in his back pocket until he is leant over half inside the fridge, sorting out the cans of root beer he asked Thomas to bring him this time, and Thomas asks, “Is that … a comic book in your pants?”

Newt jumps up so fast he just scrapes by not smashing his head on the top of the fridge.

Brushing off the mortified tingle of the pants/trousers confusion that still sticks in his mind even after having lived in America for almost two years, Newt clears his throat and pulls the comic book out of his jeans pocket, and holds it out to Thomas.

Thomas looks confused at first and not entirely sure what he’s seeing, but when he takes the book from Newt’s hand and allows it to flatten out, stunned awe fills his features. 

The comic book was a good find – a _very_ good find, no matter how long it took. Smash Comics’ _The Ray_ stuck out like a sore thumb once you knew it was there, it’s brightly coloured cover depicting the main character of the story; a superhero who lit up head to toe.

“I … I …” Thomas is saying, alternating between gawking at the cover and flipping through the pages, shaking his head in disbelief. “How?”

“Look,” Newt says, gesturing to the book, “He even looks like you.”

Thomas looks up at Newt, and then down at the comic book and up at Newt once again. A decision swims behind his eyes for a micro-second before he steps forward, comic balanced between thumb and forefinger, cups Newt’s face and kisses him. It’s gentle, and a lot softer than he’d imagined it being, and Newt doesn’t quite know what he should be doing with his hands.

After a moment Thomas pulls away, and the two of them stand there staring at one another; Thomas’ hands still cupping Newt’s cheeks, the cold press of the comic book – a stark contrast to the warmth of Thomas’ skin (so, _so_ warm) – and Newt’s hands floating in mid-air.

Thomas drops his hands to Newt’s shoulders, and asks, “Should I not have done that?”

“No,” Newt almost shouts, eyes widening, “No, I –” He pulls the comic book out of Thomas’ hands and throws it on the table, and pulls him in by the collar of his shirt. When they pull away the second time, after much longer, Newt’s lungs crying for air, he is pleased to find Thomas’ cheeks a little more illuminated than they had been before.

“Oh,” Newt laughs, and Thomas swears and bats at his cheeks as if that will make the glow go away. 

_

Later, when they’re lounging on Newt’s bed, both on their sides with the comic book between them, Thomas is flipping through the pages.

“This is wild. Raymond. The Ray. Clever,” he snorts. 

Newt feels content to lie there, head pillowed by his elbow, and watch Thomas read the comic book.

Thomas traces the small logo in the top right corner and says, “DC. Does this mean we’re nemeses now?”

Newt hums and mulls this over for a minute. “I could take you in a battle,” he says.

Thomas chirps a surprised laugh. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Newt says, rolling forward to their noses are just shy of touching. “I can fly, and I don’t know if you know this, really fast. No, I won’t elaborate.”

Thomas brushes their lips together. “Don’t be so sure of yourself. I’ll glow, like, really bright and you won’t be able to see anything. Where did I go? No one knows. And then, bam! surprise, it’s me.”

Newt rolls closer and kisses him properly, and they get lost in themselves for a while.

It’s funny the way his wings press against his skin, asking for freedom, when he is kissing Thomas. It’s the same kind of feeling he gets when he is standing on the balcony or on the beach with miles and miles of ocean at his feet, and it would be so easy to allow them to unfurl and just take off.

Newt wonders what Thomas would do if he let his wings out right now. Would he be frightened? Or just surprised? Would he find it weird? What would Thomas think of the feather thin, silver lines like scars down his back where his wings come in and out of? In order for him to see them Newt would have to remove his shirt, of course, and the thought of doing so is oddly appealing, especially when he opens his eyes to find Thomas below him, shinier than before with his T-shirt bunched up around his stomach.

“If it’s worth anything,” Newt says, “I think you’d make a great superhero.”

Thomas smiles and leans up to brush his nose against Newt’s. “You just want to see me in a skin-tight leotard.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no …” 

Thomas kisses him again. The wings beg for freedom.

_

Newt returns to work and Thomas stays. Newt tries not to look as happy about it as he feels.

Thomas works on his laptop while Newt works at his desk, submitting statistics and weather conditions in preparation for the boats that will be coming through tonight. It’s dark, and Newt has his lamp to light his work. Thomas has himself.

“Do you ever get worried,” Thomas asks, “that a boat is just going to steamroll through here?”

Newt turns around to squint at him. “No, Tommy, why –?”

Thomas types away at his laptop. “Not that it ever will, but. You know.”

Newt squints some more. “Are you looking up the probability of a ship crashing into us right now?”

Thomas stops typing. “No, I’m just … Yes, I am.”

Newt rolls his eyes and turns back to his computer. His shitty phone beeps live weather updates at him.

“It’s never happened, and it never will happen. You’re safe here. Promise.”

Thomas hums and returns to his essay from the sounds of it. Ten minutes later, when Newt is inputting the coordinates of the ship, Thomas starts again. “Do you ever think,” he begins, “about how you’re like Aquaman, but the opposite?”

Newt sighs and stops entering data. “Thomas, what are you on about?”

“You’re like the anti-Aquaman. Airman. Wingman.”

“I came up with that last one.”

“You did, I liked it.”

“No, I don’t think about how alike or unlike Aquaman I am, Tommy, to tell you the complete truth,” Newt says, and when he turns around to look at Thomas he finds him frowning at his laptop _again,_ most likely looking up Aquaman.

Newt says, “Tommy. Can you look at me?” Thomas looks at him. “You’re fine. That light up there is going to keep us perfectly safe. The boat won’t even be coming remotely near us, anyway. It’ll be yards away. Come here, I’ll show you.”

Thomas pads across the floor to Newt’s desk and leans down beside him. Newt fights the urge to pull him into his lap.

He points to the first dot on the map, which is the lighthouse. “This is us. And this,” he points to the other light on the screen, blinking and slowly moving, “Is the boat. It’s transporting coal to the north. See this line? It will travel here,” Newt drags his finger across the screen, following the path of the green line, “to all the way up here, passing us completely. We just need to make sure the light is bright enough for it to pass through safely.”

Thomas nods, eyes glued to the screen. Newt bites the bullet and places a small kiss to his temple. “Which it always is.”

Thomas worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “Can we be extra sure, though?”

Newt asks, “How?” and thirty minutes later finds himself up in the lantern room with Thomas, about the time when the boat is due to pass through. Thomas is standing in front of the light, the strong beam shining over him every five seconds. Newt wears his goggles to protect his retinas against the light. Thomas does not need a pair. 

Thomas has his hands balled into fists and is leaning his body forward as if he is preparing to take off instead of shine a beam of light across miles of ocean.

“Tell me when.”

“Three minutes,” Newt says. “And remember it can’t be too strong! If it’s too bright and someone notices we’re fucked. If it’s too bright and they can’t see we’ll be even more fucked.”

“Got it,” Thomas says, cracking his knuckles.

Newt consults his GPS and counts down the seconds until Thomas has to shine. When they get down to the wire, Newt says, “Now!” and Thomas goes very still. Even though his back is to Newt he can tell he has his eyes closed from the straight-backed posture and relaxed shoulders.

Then, the Light.

Soft at first until it grows, and pulsing in time with the revolving lantern. The light coming off of Thomas is beautiful, pure and golden like sun rays, rippling outward from his body in waves. It is unlike what he showed Newt in the kitchen that day and unlike anything Newt has ever seen before, making him never want to look away.

The boat makes its way across the waters smoothly, and once it is gone Thomas allows his light to dim, and they are left solely with the revolving lantern. Thomas turns back to Newt with pink cheeks and blown pupils, looking absolutely exhilarated.

“How did I do?” he asks.

Newt does not know what to say or do besides kiss him again, which is what he does. The googles knock into Thomas’ forehead and makes him wince, so they reposition them on Newt’s head. Thomas angles Newt to face away from the light, and kisses him, and kisses him again.

Boats passing by would not notice anything out of the ordinary unless they are looking in the right place at the right time. Then, they might make out the silhouette of two figures in the light of the lighthouse and one of them, for a split second, would appear to have wings.

_

Thomas asks Newt about his family at the beginning of September.

They’re lying in Newt’s tiny bed, snuggled up under the blankets with Thomas’ laptop on their knees, watching a boring comedy. Thomas brushes his fingers through Newt’s hair and Newt rests his head on Thomas’ shoulder, fighting sleep, when he asks, “Newt?”

“Mm?” Newt hums, eyes fluttering shut.

“Can I ask … Your family, you don’t really talk about them much. Where are they?”

Newt continues watching the screen and answers after a minute. “I’m not sure,” he says.

Thomas’ thumb rubs soothing circles into his scalp. “What happened?”

“We got separated. There was … an attack on our village. Other mutants our kind had a long-term rivalry with, I guess. We all fled, but.” He shifts. Thomas pulls him closer. “I don’t know. I went one way and they went the other. That was two years ago.”

“Shit,” Thomas whispers into his hair. “Newt, I’m so sorry.”

Newt shakes his head and turns to look up at Thomas. “I know they’re out there, and I know I’ll find them someday. I can feel it.”

He pokes Thomas’ chest, right in the center. 

“Here,” he says, and leans over the side of the bed to pull his sketchbook out from under it, and flips to a page in the middle. Three figures cluster in the middle, their wings tall above their heads. “This is mum, dad, and Sonya.”

_

The next time Newt sees Minho is at the café, two months following his birthday party when he saw him last, back when his hair was still brown. The October winds have arrived and everyone is feeling it, for one reason or another (for Newt; he wishes to take off in flight, for Thomas; _Thank fuck the heat was killing me_ ). Minho arrives one day when Newt and Thomas have decided to take another day off together – a date, Newt thinks, his insides turning to stardust – and their friend bursts through the door looking like a windswept scarecrow with his scarf and coat.

He sits in the same level of flurry as he had entered, takes one look at Newt and says, “What’d you do, take a bath in mustard sauce?” 

“Hey,” Thomas warns and places a hand over Newt’s, offended on his behalf.

Miho shrugs, “Just because I have the balls to tell your boyfriend the truth and you don’t.”

Newt snorts into his coffee. He knows his hair looks awful; he just doesn’t care. He figures it will grow out, and then when it does he’ll just simply off the mustardy bits. Problem solved. “Easy now.”

Minho leans forward, “I will not – hey. You didn’t correct me. Does that mean this –” he waves a hand between Newt and Thomas, “– is a thing? Like a _thing_ thing?”

Thomas, who is sitting with his arm around Newt’s shoulders, body curled in towards him, deadpans, “Yes, Minho.”

“Thank god,” Minho sighs, waving Teresa over, “If I had to hear about the hot, mysterious lighthouse keeper one more time I was going to off myself.”

Thomas squawks. Teresa appears at the table with a pot of coffee and a pencil behind her ear. Also, a feather in her hair, because why not. 

“Morning,” she says, despite it being 1:32 in the afternoon, but one thing Newt has slowly learnt about Teresa is that she doesn’t seem to operate on any specific plane of existence known to man, so he lets it pass. “I know, isn’t it awful? He won’t let me fix it.”

“It’s fine, guys!” Newt insists.

“I mean you kind of look like you fell asleep in a MacDonald’s factory,” Teresa says, pouring the coffee, “and lost a fight with Ronald. But other than that, yeah. What do you think, lover boy?” She asks Thomas, who is still pink from earlier.

Newt looks at him. Thomas’ mouth opens and closes a few times, no words coming out, and Newt swears, “For fuck sake.”

Minho clicks his fingers, “You should use that purple shampoo stuff my sister has. It’s meant to fix this.”

“Nah, he just needs some toner and then it’ll be –” Teresa does a chef’s kiss.

Newt sighs and leans back into Thomas, who shuffles closer happily.

“Is it that bad?” he asks Thomas when Minho launches into a story about another awful client experience to Teresa, who sits down with them despite not being on her break.

“No, it’s just,” Thomas makes a face, “super yellow.” 

Newt groans. “Bloody hell, _fine_. Teresa? How far is your house?”

_

The answer is not far at all, actually, just across the road and around the corner. Teresa takes him over during her actual lunch break to Fix The Problem” and Newt is honestly not too surprised to find she already has all the toner necessary to Fix Said Problem. Upon entering her apartment – small and tidy, a studio like Thomas’ (although it’s not like Newt has ever seen it) – there is a small ginger cat on her window sill, enjoying the breeze and sunshine. Teresa takes the feather out of her hair and waves it at the cat, who immediately perks up and scampers over.

“Is this your cat?” he asks, noting the lack of collar.

“No,” Teresa says, offering it a treat, “she just comes over a lot.”

The two of them set up in Teresa’s bathroom. Newt sits in a chair facing the mirror while Teresa gets to work on his hair, slapping the cold, strongly smelling chemicals on his scalp. While it is processing, he asks her questions; how her shop is going, how school is, how busy the café usually gets, and how long she has known Thomas.

“Since we were kids,” she answers the last one, “Six or seven. He was the most gangly, dorkiest little thing you’ll ever meet. So cute.”

Newt smiles at the image. Then Teresa says, “You know, I’m glad he met you, Newt. He’s been … I don’t know. I can _feel_ him more?” Newt looks up to find her eyes growing glassy in the mirror, the white of them turning blue. “He’s lighter. The air around him glides over his skin rather than pushing against it. It’s hard to explain.” She shakes her head and the blue goes away.

Newt doesn’t know what to do with this information, but it makes him feel short of breath, his palms tingling. He looks at her and says, “I’m glad I met him, too.”

When she is washing his hair out, he asks, “What is it that Minho … does?”

“Oh. He shapeshifts. All kinds of things,” she says. “He doesn’t like to talk about it much, mostly because of the animal transformations at really, uh, inconvenient times.” 

Newt squints at her. “Are you meant to know that?”

Teresa blushes. “Probably not. Don’t say anything.”

Newt mimes zipping his lips and Teresa laughs and continues washing out his hair. She dries it for him, too, and at this point Newt realises that they have been at Teresa’s apartment far longer than her hour break allowance.

Newt is highly impressed with the end result, his hair back to its natural shade of sandy blonde, a shade he hasn’t seen on himself for two years. He shakes his head and says to Teresa, “You truly are magic.”

She smiles and does a bow.

She asks to see his wings when he is about to leave, with her bottom lip between her teeth and a worried crease between her brows. “Tell me to fuck off if that’s overstepping, or weird, or –”

“Teresa,” Newt says, “It’s fine.”

A few weeks ago was when Newt showed his wings to Thomas properly. It had been the first time they spent the night together and Newt figured it was a good time as any. He stood in the middle of the room, clothes off, and allowed them to unfurl from under his skin. It has been a while since he had been flying so they came easily, and Thomas had spent a good few minutes circling him, his eyes roving over the wings and taking in all the minor details of them. Newt had never felt so _seen_ and so vulnerable than in that moment, but also never more enamoured. 

Teresa’s reaction, when Newt lifts the back of his shirt up to allow his wings to slip out, is less calm.

“Holy shit!” she cries, jumping back into her coffee table and falling on to it.

“Whoa, careful!”

“They’re …” Teresa struggles, “They’re so much bigger than I expected.”

Newt raises an amused eyebrow. “I thought you could see everything.”

“Not _everything_. Can I?”

Newt nods, and Teresa gently pokes at a feather, sighing _Whoa_ to herself again.

_

Thomas invites Newt to Christmas with his family and friends.

Newt, having just gotten down off the top of the lantern after straddling it for two hours to clean the bulb, tired and fatigued and in a sour mood, had a minor crisis when he’d heard these words. The first emotion to enter his dried-up system was an irrational kind of anger at the short notice, an irritation at Thomas for just springing this on him out of the blue, on a regular old Wednesday, of all days, then;

“Tommy,” Newt said, squeezing a grapefruit like a stress ball, “I don’t have anything even remotely suitable to wear to a Christmas party, especially not one with your parents!”

Thomas is unflapped, as usual. “It’s okay, you’ll get some.”

“ _I’ll_ _get some_ – _!_ ”

“You can borrow something of mine,” Thomas says.

“Oh.” Newt stops squeezing the life out of the poor grapefruit. Thomas stands up and meets him by the counters. He looks nice today, Newt thinks, a thin red sweater that compliments his hair and eyes. His arms grip the countertop on either side of Newt’s hips, boxing him in, and when Newt breathes he smells a soft hint of something spicy, and mint, and sighs. 

He’s still mad at him, make no mistake about that. But _god._

“Tommy,” Newt begins, “Have you told your parents about me?”

“Of course,” Thomas says, “Why wouldn’t I?”

Newt tries to convey a casual shrug in his posture and is unsure if he succeeds. It’s not unlike Newt never thought he would meet Thomas’ parents – they’ve been technically “dating” for a little over four months now, so he knew it was bound to happen eventually. It's that he’s never done it before, so the concept is a little hard to formulate in his mind. He always thought, back in his village, when he did eventually begin dating, this step would have been skipped on account of everyone knowing everyone.

Newt is unsure how much Thomas has told his parents about him, and he is unsure what to expect. Will they be instantly welcoming, or standoffish while they keep back and try and get a reading on Newt to figure out if he was going to leave their son heartbroken. Would they be curious about the strange lighthouse keeper who lives on a stone island at the beach?

What if they don’t like him?

Thomas kisses his temple, and it snaps Newt out of his head.

“Stop worrying,” Thomas says, with hopeful eyes, “and say you’ll come?”

Newt sighs and lets his head fall forward until his forehead is pressed against Thomas’. Threading his fingers behind his neck, toying lightly with the soft hairs there, Newt asks, “Does this mean I’ll finally be allowed to see your place?”

_

The question followed with a confused, _Wait, you’ve never seen my apartment?_ response from Thomas, and a deadpan, _No, Tommy, you bloody weirdo. I was starting to think you had a dead body up there,_ from Newt.

He finally sees it a week later, and it is everything Newt expected and nothing like he expected.

A lot less tidy than Teresa’s, of course, but unlike hers, everything cluttered looks to be purposeful, rather than the eclectic mess of a creative mind. Over the coffee table are textbooks and spiral notebooks, some open and some closed, and there is a small television the size of a computer monitor in the corner sitting on a woven cane tv stand, with some plants. There are rugs crooked on the floor and the kitchen looks as glamorous as Newt’s back at home, and there is a bookshelf against the wall dividing the bedroom from the rest of the apartment. Colourful comic books pop out at him.

“Sorry, it’s –” Thomas kicks something with his foot, and it rolls under the coffee table, “It’s a bit of a mess.”

 _It’s very you,_ Newt doesn’t say, but thinks very fondly.

Thomas takes his hand and leads him through to the apartment and behind the dividing wall where his bed is, as well as a small chest of drawers and a built-in closet. While Thomas busies himself with pulling out items of clothing, Newt looks around. There are no windows in this corner but Thomas has made do; a red and black tie-dye tapestry hung behind the double bed (thin bedsheets, no quilt, and Newt knows this it is for him all year found), and warm yellow fairy lights are strung horizontally on the opposite wall. A fern is crammed in the corner. 

It’s all very dreamy and very Thomas, and Newt suddenly does not want to be choosing clothes anymore. 

Luckily Thomas does all the work for him, picking out a simple pair of black trousers and a nice, dusty blue button-down. “These should fit,” he says.

Newt nods and moves closer, bracketing his hips with his hands and leaning in. “Thanks. So, we’ll be coming here to get dressed, then?”

Thomas’ eyebrows jump up, “Oh, I see how it is. You play all innocent, all, _I don’t have anything to wear, Tommy_ , just to get me here and get me into bed, huh? I see you.”

Newt plays hurt. “You think so low of me, Thomas? I’m wounded.”

Thomas hums. “More trickery.”

Newt laughs and kisses his jaw. “Absolutely,” he murmurs, and they fall back onto the cool sheets.

_

The night of the Christmas party comes around and Newt is on edge, feeling as if he could jump out of his skin at the slightest provocation. He opts for putting on a brave face for Thomas and freaking out internally, but the nerves really hit when they pull up out the front of Thomas’ childhood home, and the front door is open and curtained with tinsel and Christmas lights, and he can see Thomas’ friends and family milling about inside. And he is wearing Thomas’ clothes.

On the way over Thomas had given him the rundown of his extended family, who’s cool and who to avoid and who’s bullshit not to believe, and Newt thinks he has a pretty good feel of it already (Aunt Monica = cool, Cousin Alex = shit talker, don’t listen to his stories of Thomas in high school) but the minute Thomas turns off the bike and they stand, and the Christmas music reaches his ears as does the laughter and conversation, he feels incredibly out of place. 

“Hey,” Thomas says, touching his elbow, “You good?”

Newt nods, swallowing hard, “Good.”

“I promise you’ll be fine,” Thomas says, kissing his cheek, “Only a third of them are carnivorous. Come on, I think I can see mom peeping through the curtains.”

Newt turns quickly around and, sure enough, the curtains are disturbed as if someone has very quickly run away from them. Thomas sighs under his breath and takes Newt’s hand. Thomas’ mom appears in the hallway almost instantly once they are through the door, her long dark hair glistening in the light. She wears a red Santa’s hat and holds a glass of champagne in one hand.

“There you are!” she calls happily as she approaches, a man appearing at her elbow a moment later, looking equally as pleased with a pair of felt antlers on his head.

“Hey mom, hey dad,” Thomas says, his tone screaming _Please don’t embarrass me_. The glint in the woman’s eye says she will do nothing of the sort.

“And there _you_ are,” his dad says, smiling broadly with straight white teeth at Newt.

He notices instantly that Thomas looks like his father in his features, eyes, and jawline predominantly, and he looks like his mother in the way she holds herself. 

“Finally.”

“ _Dad_.”

They introduce themselves to Newt with a firm handshake from his dad and a European kiss from his mom, then shuffle them both further into the house with the promise of food and drinks. They drink one glass of wine each being that _It’s Christmas!_ and everyone’s too happy and high on the festive spirit to care if you’re just shy of twenty-one, and Teresa shows up halfway through the night in a turtle neck and a Santa beard. Newt talks to Thomas’ family and listens to their stories and finds that a lot of them are genuinely interested in the ins and out of being a lighthouse keeper, Thomas’ dad especially. 

Newt has a good time. He becomes looser the longer the night goes on, and at one point allows himself to stand closer to Thomas, slipping an arm around his waist with Thomas’ around his shoulders while Thomas argues with his cousin Alex. They’re both laughing as Teresa calls him out on his bullshit, and out of the corner of Newt’s eye a flash goes off, and he turns to see Thomas’ mom lowering her phone with a mischievous smile that looks all too familiar. 

It happens when a light in the Christmas tree blows and shorts the rest of the tree. Everyone groans their disappointment at the sudden dark corner of the room, until Thomas’ mom, standing beside Newt, presses her index finger under her nose and sneezes.

A light, small as a firefly, shoots out from her finger and flies into the Christmas tree like a tiny bullet, and a moment later the light flicker back on, and everyone cheers.

Newt’s jaw in on the floor. Thomas’ mom looks at him and winks, tapping the bridge of her nose, and walks away to find her husband as if nothing happened. Newt stares at the tree – now glowing even brighter than before – and the place where the woman disappeared, absolutely gobsmacked.

When they’re leaving, and Thomas is readying the bike, he notices something in Newt’s posture and asks, “Is everything alright?”

Newt looks him dead in the eyes and says, “I think you need to have a long conversation with your mother.” 

_

Thomas does have a long conversation with her, and Newt gets to hear all about it when Thomas bursts through the front door of the lighthouse and bellows, “ _Un-fucking-believable!_ ”

Newt laughs and laughs and laughs.

_

The letter arrives in January.

It’s a simple white envelope taped shut with cello tape, and it is addressed to _The Keeper, Haven Bay Lighthouse, Haven Bay, Oregon._ There is no return address written on the envelope. Newt opens it thinking nothing of it, probably some pamphlets advertising vacation homes, or something, but still the name on the letter gives him pause; The Keeper.

Newt opens the envelope, pulls out the letter, and starts reading.

It begins _Newt_ in the familiar, cursive scrawl that can only belong to his sister, and the world stops spinning.

\- _Newt,_

_You have no idea how long it took to find you. For a while, we thought we never would, but there was always a restless nagging inside of me that said otherwise. And I can’t believe it! After years of searching all it took was one Facebook post. Ridiculous._

_You’re probably really confused and have a lot of questions, so I’ll catch you up:_

_After Glencoe, we were all separated – me from mum and dad and you – I was on my own for a while until mum and dad found me on a beach in Brighton. After that, we went out looking for you, for any signs that would tell us where you’d gone, and we even managed to get in touch with other people from the village who survived the attack but no one knew where you were._

_Oh, the village. It’s gone, by the way, but you might have seen that in the newspaper._

_Anyway. We’ve been holed up in Colorado all these years. It’s pretty but it’s empty. And it’s always bloody freezing. Did you know that Colorado is only 1,131.5 miles from Oregon? Isn’t that insane?_

_The picture I mentioned before; mum had the idea to keep an eye out on social media for you. You know, in case you decided to make a profile. I thought it was stupid but made one anyway. I looked at it every day, but I still thought it was stupid. I thought it was stupid even when a friend of a friend of a friend or however the fuck Facebook works posted a photo of her son at their Christmas party, and guess who happened to be standing next to him._

_We couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it._

_I did some more digging (it’s amazing what the internet can do, huh?) and found you. There you are, right there on the website for Haven Bay lighthouse. I think dad cried for a whole day._

_Lighthouse keeper, huh? How’s that? Sounds boring._

_Okay. I’m going to wrap this up now. You might have noticed I didn’t put a return address on the envelope. It’s because, well. Old habits die hard, I guess. So I’ll just say this: we’re at the cabin on the east lake, where the sun sets pink, five miles from the old ski lodge. Mum works in the garden and dad builds furniture. I deliver vegetables to the townsfolk._

_Come find us, big brother. We miss you._

_Love always,_

_Mum, Dad and Sonya. -_

Newt is shaking by the end of the letter, tears streaming freely down his face. _She found him._

The sound of a motorbike, two steps away from death, reaches his ears and Newt wastes no time in running down the stairs two at a time and throwing open the door before Thomas has even had the chance to park. He pulls off his helmet and calls, “Special delivery for a Mr. Newt!” but Newt has already leaped down the stone steps towards him. The tide is high today, and it crashes against the edges of the sand driveway.

Newt’s letter is clutched tightly in his hand, and he is panting when he reaches Thomas.

Thomas sees the look on his face and instantly panics. “What is it? What’s happened? What –”

“Tommy,” Newt pants, “She – she – she –”

Thomas cups his face in his hands, and the warmth grounds him some. Thomas says, “Breathe, and tell me what the matter is?”

“No matter.” Newt shakes his head. “I mean yes matter. I mean – Look!” Newt shoves the letter at Thomas’ chest. “Tommy, she found me.”

The wind whips around them like a small hurricane, and it takes the two of them holding all four corners to keep the page flat. Thomas reads through the letter, his eyes growing wider and wider. he gasps, “This is your sister?”

Newt nods vigorously. “Yes.”

“They’re in Colorado?”

“I know.”

“Newt,” Thomas gapes, “That’s only a three-hour flight from here!”

“I know!”

They embrace, and Newt spends a good few minutes crying into the woollen fabric of Thomas’ jacket, Thomas holding him as the waves continue to crash around them. When he’s calmed enough to lean back, Thomas gently wipes the tears from his face and whispers, “You found them.”

“ _They_ found _me_.”

Thomas kisses him. It’s wet, and Newt is still mostly blubbering, but Thomas doesn’t seem to care. “What are you going to do?”

Newt sniffs. “I don’t know. I need to think, I need to sort things out, I –”

“But you’re going?”

“Of course I’m going!” Newt laughs. He feels hysterical, his head is light and dizzy and filled with mirth. He feels like someone has stolen his mind and replaced it with sunlight, and his lungs are filled with cotton and wildflowers. He kisses Thomas again because he can.

When they break away, they can over the letter once more together, and Thomas comments, “This is pretty cryptic.”

Newt nods. “That’s Sonya.”

“Colorado is a pretty big place,” Thomas says, his eyes shifting to Newt. “You might need some help navigating it.”

Newt looks at him; his hair blowing about in the wind, and his eyes shining brighter than the sun, cheeks flushed despite the winter chill and thinks he’s never been happier in his life. Newt used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling and counting the horns of the passing ships like sheep; lost, scared and alone, and unsure of everything.

Now he has Thomas, a wild spectre of a boy who glows like the sun, who is all the same crazy and the most amazing person Newt has ever met, and friends who are equally as such.

He also a letter, the open skies and the ocean at his feet, and his family waiting for him. 

_

**Author's Note:**

> *kissy face emoji*
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr here.](http://singt0me.tumblr.com/)


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